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SA



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Barbard College Library



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FROM THE



BRIGHT LEGACY



One half the Income from this Legacy, which was re-



celved In 1880 under the will of



JONATHAN BROWN BRIGHT



of Waltham, Massachusetts.



is



to be expended for books



for the College Library.



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is devoted to scholarsh:



benefit of descendants



ay in Harvard University for the



HENRY BRIGHT, JR.,



Massachusetts, in 1686, In the



who died at Watertown,



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to the schol



The will



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ment shall be made In every book added to the Library



ander its p





THE DANISH WEST INDIES

“* How thé colonies were actually governed; what the



colonists did at work and play; how the mother country



stamped her image upon them, and to what extent the



lineaments of that image were modified by contact with



local forces—these are matters that interest the reader of



to-day.” —W. R. Shepherd.





Le]



THE DANISH WEST INDIES,



UNDER COMPANY RULE.



cL



(1671-1754)



WITH A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER, 1755-1917



BY



DJPx. D.



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT POMQNA COLLEGE



WALDEMAR WESTERGAAR



ie



WITH AN INTRODUCTION



BY



H. MORSE STEPHENS, M. A., Lrrr. D. (Harv.)



GATHER PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA



MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY



1917



All rights reserve

SA279 5-2



<a ARO COL, Ps



*yUN 281917"



CraRaaY



Ur



° arre ©



Corrniaat, 1917



Br THE MACMILLAN COMPANY



Set up and printed. Published June, 1917.

PREFACE



Since the opening of the Panama Canal, the attention of

the United States has been drawn more and more to those -

Caribbean and Gulf regions, which were, until comparatively

recent times, the economic center of the New World and the

source of a considerable part of that wealth which kept the

wheels of industry running in the Old. If Tobacco was King

in the seventeenth, and Cotton in the nineteenth, then Sugar

surely held the scepter in the eighteenth century.



This book was written before the United States began the

negotiations that have resulted in the transfer of the Danish

West Indian islands to the United States. The increased in-

terest of Americans in Caribbean lands, and the scarcity of

authoritative historical books upon the subject will it is hoped

justify its appearance now. It assumes a certain curiosity on

the part of the reader, first, as to how the Danish-Norwegian

state became interested in the islands off the Spanish Main,

and second, how so small a state has managed to retain its hold

for nearly two centuries and a half.



The pages which follow record an episode in the time when

Sugar was King. They are the result of an attempt to identify

and appraise a number of official and other papers found in

the Bancroft Collection at the University of California. These

documents had come from the Danish West Indian islands,

and were first brought to the writer’s attention by Professor

Henry Morse Stephens under whose inspiration and guidance

the subsequent investigations were carried on. The paucity

of the printed material dealing with the history of Danish

colonization in America led to a search in the Danish libraries

and archives for further light. The entire archives of the

Danish West India and Guinea Company were found substan-

tially intact in their repository in the state archives building of

Denmark near Christiansborg castle. Except for the labors of



[v]

vi PREFACE



a few scholars in search of genealogical and biographical in-

formation, the collection had to all appearances scarcely been

touched.



With such a wealth of material to go through, the writer

cannot claim to have exhausted his subject, but he hopes to

have made more intelligible than hitherto the story of one of

those commercial joint-stock companies that were so closely

associated with the seventeenth and eighteenth century ex-

ploitation of New World resources.



Treated by itself, colonial history is well-nigh meaningless.

Only when considered as part of European history—indeed,

when related somehow to universal history—does it become

vital. It is obvious that the political and economic development

of American colonies cannot be adequately followed without

giving considerable attention to the forces that prompted, and

largely guided, commercial ventures. The present work is the

history of a company composed mainly of Danish business

men intent upon embracing such commercial opportunities as

the New World seemed to offer them. Their headquarters

were in Copenhagen, their factories, or trading centers, in the

West Indies and on the Guinea coast. Business was the chief

aim, the establishment of a colony an incident, of their en-

deavors. Yet one cannot be understood apart from the other.



* The réle played by Denmark-Norway in tropical coloniza-

tion was indeed not large and not infrequently the interest of

the English—or American—reader will center in what the men

of the North saw and heard in the West Indies, rather than in

what they did there. Yet, there was enough of what might be

called economic solidarity in the Western commercial world

to lend the Danish occupation a genuine interest. Despite

local differences, the experiences of the Danes were fairly typical

of those of the Dutch, the French, the English, and even the

Spanish merchants and administrators. The physical condi-

tions with which all had to contend were nearly identical. The

political and economic ideas which the Europeans who sought

to earn their livelihood in the West Indies brought with them

had many points of similarity. In fact, the population of many

of the islands was surprisingly cosmopolitan.





THE DANISH WEST INDIES



1660.

1671.

1673.

1685.

1690.

1690.



1694.



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE



Coup d@’état of Frederick II.



Establishment of West India Company.

West India and Guinea companies united.

Brandenburg treaty concerning St. Thomas.

Arff takes over Guinea factory.

Thormohlen lease of St. Thomas begins.

Company receives back St. Thomas.



1696-97. Arff gives up Guinea trade.



1697.

1706.

1715.

1717.

1726.

1738.

1738.

173A.

1747.

1748.

1754.



Company begins slave trade in earnest.



Planters send first delegation to Copenhagen.



Planters send second delegation.



St. John occupied by Danes.



Drought and famine on St. Thomas.



Negro insurrection on St. John.



St. Croix purchased from France.



New charter granted by king.



“Union plan and convention” enlarging Company.



Planters send third delegation to Copenhagen.



Company’s shares sold to king; Danish islands become

royal colonies.



[ xif]



TABLE OF CONTENTS



PAGE

PREFACE. ........... ccc c cee cece cere e ne eeecneeencees v-ix

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.................c ccc ceeeeceeeee xi

INTRODUCTION BY H. MORSE STEPHENS............. xvii



AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION: Groarapaicat AnD Historica 1

CHap



I. Tu EsrapiisHMeEnt oF THE COMPANY................. $1

II. Ta Crrrican Prriop (1680-1690)..................06. 45

II. Tue Branpenpurcers aT St. THOMAS................. 7

IV. Tas Leasmne or Guinea Anp St. THOMAS.............. 05

V. Tae Govrernonsuir oF JoHN LoRENTzZ..... Sec cceeaeees 105



VI. Sr. Toomas anp Sr. JoHN 48 PLANTATION CoLoNtEs (1688-

0S) 121

VII. Tux Stave Traps wwe tHe Dann West Invis......... 187

VIII. Tur Suave AND THE PLANTER... . 2... ec ees 187

TX. Tue Panter AND THE COMPANY... .........000ceeeeee 179

X. Toe Acquisrrion or Sr. CRorx. 0... ccc cece ees 199

XI. Tue Company UNDER THE New CHARTER.............. 218

BIBLIOGRAPHY... 10... ccc ccc ccc ccc cece ee eenes 268



APPENDIXES



A. GOVERNORS IN THE WEsT INDIES AND IN GUINEA........ 285



B. Dimecrors AND BoarD oF SHAREHOLDERS IN CoPEN-

HAGEN . 0... oc cee ce cece ete e cette cee eeceees 290



C. Tae Friest Caarrer oF THE Danis West Inpia Com-

PANY 20... cc cece cece cence eee ee eee eeeees 294



D. Caanrer or 1697 For THE West Inp1IA AND GutngEa Com-

PANY... cee ccc cece cece ee eee ences se eeeeaee 299

E. Lerrer or Cuanits Essar ro Apotrn Esmit............ 803



F. Report or Boarp oF Pouice aNpD TRADE TO Kina FRep-

ERICK IV (1716)... 0... cece ence eee eees 806

G. Governor Erm Breda To Drecrors, 1719, 1722...... 315

H. Sratptics ror St. Thomas: PopuLaTIon, PLANTATIONS... $18



I. Sratmtics ror Sr. JoHN anp Sr. Crorx: PorunarIon,

xiv



TABLE OF CONTENTS



APPENDIXES



PAGE



(J. List or Suave Carcozs Arrivine iv Damn West In-



ee i



K. Prices on St. Toomas (1687-1751)



ee meee cere reser erccce



L. West Inpian Sucar Exportep From CopENHAGEN



we ccee



M. Company’s Recerets anp Dests at St. THomas



eee eee



N. Company’s Receipts AND Dests at St. Crorx



eee cc cccoe



O. Carrran INVESTED at St. THOMAS UNDER PLAN oF 1747... . $85



P. Tue Company’s Business In Brown Sucar



oe



Q. Tux Company’s Business in Corton



ee



R. Rerorns on Company’s CapPrraL



ey



S. Sr. THomas Statistics: M1scELLANEOUS



ee eee wee wee ene oe



T. Sr. Crorx Statistics: MIscELLANEOUS



ey



841



U. Lust or SHAREHOLDERS IN THE YEAR 1751



INDEX



Ce Or



851

MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS



* CaRrsTIANsTeD, St. Crorx, mv 1815.................. Frontispiece

FACING

PAGE

¥Map or THE Danisa West Inpian IsbaANDS.................. 8

(Botanisk Tidsskrift. Bd. 29. F. Borgesen)

“Map oF Sr. Toomas (71715-1788)... 00.000 ce eee 122

(MS. Map, undated, Royal Library, Copenhagen)

“Map or Sr. JOHN (1780)... ccc eee ec eee cette eee 197

(Published by P. L. Oxholm, Copenhagen, 1800)

*Map or Norrueen Evrore: Batic aND Norta Sea Lanps.. 136

~CHRIBTIANSBORG CasTLE, GUINEA COAST...............00005: 189

(Engraved by M. Rosler, Copenhagen, 1760)

“Map oF Sr. CRO. 20. cece eens 202

(MS. Map, undated, Royal Library, Copenhagen)

¢Smetcu or St. Crom’s Town............ 0... c cece eee eens 216

(Watercolor drawing, State Archives, Copenhagen)

-Map or Sr. THomas (1767)... 0.0... occ ccc ee eee Lennie 45

(Oldendorp’s Geschichte der Mission, 1777)

“Map or Sr. Crorx (1767). 00 ccc cece eee ene 245

(Oldendorp’s Geschichte der Mission, 1777)

‘Map or Sr. Crorx (1754, 1766)... 0 eee 248

(Survey by J. M. Beck; engraved by O. H. de Lode, 1754;

names of plantation owners filled in, 1766)

‘Sr. Tomas Harsor (View to Westward)................ 05: 257

‘Map or CaRIBBEAN LANDS... . 2.2... eee 262



[xv]





xviii INTRODUCTION



fought, by the English against the Spanish in the seventeenth

century, and by the English against the French in the eighteenth

century. The struggle for the possession of the West Indies was,

among the European nations of the seventeenth and eight-

eenth centuries, both political and economic. To use a phrase

of Doctor Westergaard’s, those were the days when “sugar was

king.” The importance of the sugar trade overcame all other

considerations, and the European nation that could grow its

own sugar cane and import its own sugar in its own ships had an

immense commercial advantage over other countries. The

peculiar geographical formation of the West India Islands gave

every one of the maritime nations of Europe a chance to grow

its own sugar. The earliest of these nations in the West Indies,

Spain, counted rather on other staples than sugar, and paid

more attention to its mainland possessions than to its island

possessions. Great Britain, by its settlement of Barbados and

St. Christopher and by its conquest of Jamaica, definitely

started its career as a planter and importer of sugar, and the

French, the Dutch, the Danes, and even the Courlanders

followed the example. One of the most interesting experiments

in this direction was that of Denmark.



Doctor Waldemar Westergaard, a scholar of Danish extrac-

tion, though born in the United States, undertook, some years

ago, to study the history of the Danish West India Islands.

His knowledge of the Danish language from his childhood

caused him to study with great interest certain Danish West

‘India documents of primary importance which had been col-

lected for Mr. H. H. Bancroft of San Francisco, and which now

form part of the Bancroft Library, in the possession of the

University of California. In his study of these particular docu-

ments, Doctor Westergaard discovered that not even in the

Danish language was there any reliable history of the Danish

West Indies. He therefore resolved to go to Denmark, and

there soon found that the Danish historians had neglected the

history of their colonial possessions. He spent about a year

working among the Danish documents, and was thereby enabled

to obtain first-hand information as to the history of the Danish

West India Islands, and to write a history of the Danish settle-

INTRODUCTION xix



ments based principally upon primary authorities. This in-

troduction is not intended to be mere laudation of Doctor

Westergaard or an account of his researches, which are described

sufficiently well in his bibliography. The originality and

merits of his book can be seen by the most superficial reader.

Still less is this introduction intended to be a review of his book;

it will be rather an attempt to set forth the results of Doctor

Westergaard’s labors as bearing upon the general history of the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.



Students of American colonial history know well enough the

importance of the chartered companies, through which was

made possible the early English settlement of the Atlantic

seaboard of the present United States of America. But these

companies which dealt with the mainland settlements only

exhibit on a small scale the general principles by which com-

panies were chartered for trade and plantation, not only by the

English Government, but by other European countries as well.

Some day it may be possible to bring out the likeness and un-

likeness between the conditions under which companies were

chartered in Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and

Denmark. M. Pierre Bonnassieux, in his Les Grandes Com-

pagnies de Commerce, has given the outlines of such a study, and

other French writers have dealt with phases of the French East

India Company in particular. More interesting, if it could be

made accessible from the primary sources, would be the history,

and especially the early history, of the Dutch companies. The

story of the English companies before 1720 has been written by

Mr. William R. Scott, but their later history is scattered about

in many different books dealing with India and America. On

all of them is light thrown by Doctor Westergaard’s elaborate

study of the Danish company. In these modern days, an

attempt is being made to revive the chartered-company idea in

England, and the British North Borneo Company, under Sir

Alfred Dent; the British East Africa Company, under Sir

William Mackinnon; the British South Africa Company, under

Cecil Rhodes; and the British West Africa Company, under Sir

George Taubman-Goldie, have all of them been an adaptation

of seventeenth-century ideas to nineteenth-century conditions.

xx INTRODUCTION



There have been two great principles of expansion and settle-

ment of European nations in Asia, Africa, and America. The

one, direct conquest and settlement by the governments of

European nations, and the other the tapping of the financial

resources of different countries through charters granted to

companies of merchants who subscribed capital for settlement

and trade beyond the seas, under the direct permission or

license of their respective governments. Spain and Portugal

were the two countries that believed in direct expansion under

royal authority. In some ways, the Portuguese experiment is

more interesting, especially in regard to trade, than the far

larger Spanish development of empire. The Portuguese Govern-

ment, after the discovery of the direct sea route to India by

Vasco da Gama, kept in its own hands as a government the

entire trade of Asia. It was the Portuguese king’s agents who

purchased the cargoes for Portuguese royal ships in India and

Ceylon, in China and Japan and Malacca, in Persia and Arabia.

These cargoes of Asiatic produce were brought to Lisbon in the

king’s ships, and the goods were then purchased by individual

merchants out of the king’s warehouses. It would be possible to

dwell at length upon the direct action of the Spanish and

Portuguese Governments in the work of expansion, settlement,

and trade in Asia, Africa, and America, but the illustration of

the Portuguese Government’s control of the Asiatic trade will

serve to point out the chief characteristics of government direc-

tion. Other countries, notably Great Britain and the Protestant

Netherlands in the sixteenth century, and France and Denmark

in the seventeenth century, did not, for the most part, work

through direct governmental agency, but through chartered

companies. The relation between these chartered companies

and the governments of their respective countries is a matter of

great interest, and much new light is thrown upon it by Doctor

Westergaard’s very careful presentation of the relation between

the Danish West India Company and the Danish Government.



It so happened that Danish expansion into the West Indies

took place at the time when the government of Denmark-

Norway was entirely in the hands of the Crown. The Revolu-

tion of 1660 had put an end to any body of representatives in a



xxii INTRODUCTION



indeed, by all European planters in the West Indies. The

natives of the islands could not work, and the labor problem,

therefore, produced the negro slave trade. This meant the

establishment by Denmark, as well as by the other countries

owning plantations, of barracoons, defended by forts, on the

west coast of Africa, where negro slaves could be collected for

transport to the West Indies. Very carefully has Doctor

Westergaard described these establishments, and shown their

importance to the prosperity of the Islands. Indeed, a careful

study of his book and of his appendixes will show what some may

think a disproportionate amount of space devoted to the slave

trade. On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that the

negro slave trade was one of the most important phases of com-

merce in the eighteenth century, and that the wise stockholder

in a West India trading and plantation company would naturally

endeavor to have the company import slaves for its own and the

planters’ use in company ships rather than to buy them at a

big profit to slave traders of other countries.



Denmark is a very small country compared to Spain, France,

and Great Britain, and yet shows in the history of her West

India Islands, it is possible to say, many illustrations of the

mistakes that ruined the more extensive experiments of other

nations. This is not the proper place to describe Doctor Wester-

gaard’s treatment of individuals, although he has made quite a

picture gallery of governors, factors, captains, chaplains, states-

men, and politicians. To some readers, his personal description

of individuals will appeal more than any other feature, but to

others the larger economic and political questions involved will

seem of greater interest. One episode in particular might be

here mentioned, the story of the Brandenburg Company. The

Great Elector of Brandenburg is a figure to conjure with; from

him started the larger growth of the House of Hohenzollern and

its development into King of Prussia and German Emperor.

Those who read the past in the light of the present have some-

times wondered that neither Brandenburg nor Prussia had its

part in the great movement of colonial expansion. Close stu-

dents of Hohenzollern history know that Frederick the Great of

Prussia deliberately resolved not to make his state into a naval

INTRODUCTION xxiii



or a colonial power, but comparatively few know that the

attempt was made earlier, not in the direct fashion of sov-

ereignty, but through an arrangement with the King of Den-

mark, in the West Indies. It seems curious, at the present

time, to think of the Hohenzollern Prince, and one as famous as

the Great Elector, making arrangements with Denmark for a

West India sugar experiment. The story of the Brandenburgers

has been dealt with at considerable length by Doctor Wester-

gaard, and doubtless, to some readers, this will prove the most

interesting new fact brought to their attention. We have to

remember that Brandenburg was a poor country in the seven-

teenth century, and that it had not the capital or the means to

develop a colonial power. We must remember also that it had

no sea power, while Denmark-Norway was one of the great sea

powers, on account of its extended coast line, its geographical

position, and the efficiency of its sailors.



During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Danish

West Indies passed through various stages of prosperity and

failure, and were at times profitable to the Danish Crown and to

the Danish people, and at other times a drain upon their re-

sources. But the time at last came, in the nineteenth century,

when there was no more profit to be made out of cane sugar, and

the Danish Islands definitely declined. The abolition of the

negro slave trade, the development of beet sugar, the building

up of larger political and economic units, all played their part

in decreasing the value of the Danish West Indies either to

Denmark or to the inhabitants themselves. The same depres-

sion from the same causes was to be seen in the West India

possessions of other European countries. Ever since the aboli-

tion of negro slavery, the English West Indies have been profit-

less. But for pride, the Danes might have easily abandoned

their West India possessions many years ago. But pride in

their past is pretty strong in small nationalities that have once

been powers in the world. Denmark, after losing Norway in

1814, and Schleswig-Holstein in 1864, became a very small na-

tion indeed, and the Danish West Indies became rather a burden

than anything else. Only one nation in the world desired the

possession of the Danish West Indies, and that not for economic

xxiv INTRODUCTION



reasons. I think that it can be asserted that neither Great

Britain nor France would have taken them as a gift, but the

United States of America has, for more than a half century, de-

sired the harbor of St. Thomas for strategic reasons. Porto

Rico, acquired after the Spanish-American War in 1898, had no

naval base, and when the Panama Canal was finally undertaken

and then built, it became worth while for the United States to

look again towards the acquisition of St. Thomas. The only

argument against the cession of the Islands was historic pride,

and in these days of European crisis, historic pride could not

stand further against actual need. So the Danes made up their

minds to forget that they had been a West India power, and to

the great delight of the inhabitants of the Islands, who, as

Doctor Westergaard points out, are generally not Danes, and to

sell their West India possessions to the United States of Amer-

ica. It might be imagined that some patriotic Danes would

feel deeply the loss of the Islands as signifying the passing of an

historic relic of the Danish past, but the neglect which the

Danish people have shown for the history of their West Indies,

as shown in Doctor Westergaard’s statement that no Danish

scholar has written the history of the Islands, and that even the

most valuable primary authorities have been utterly neglected,

shows that the feeling of historic pride has not gone very deep

among Danish scholars. At any rate, it should be noted as an

interesting fact, that the first history of the Danish West Indies,

written from primary sources, should be the work of the son of a

Danish family which immigrated to North Dakota, and that he

should have received his historical training at the University of

California.

H. Morse SreprHeEns.

THE DANISH WEST INDIES



THE DANISH WEST INDIES UNDER

COMPANY RULE



(1671-1754)

INTRODUCTION: GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL



Ir Belgium has been described, and not inaccurately, as “the

cockpit of Europe,”’ the West Indies may be regarded as “the

cockpit” of sea power. The islands and mainland of the

Caribbean and Gulf regions have been among the prizes for

which European states have contended in practically every

war of consequence that has been fought during the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries.



Just why Spaniards, Frenchmen and Englishmen, Dutchmen

and Danes, Swedes and Brandenburgers, and even Knights of

Malta and Courlanders, should all at one time or another have

directed their energies to West Indian commerce and commer-

cial exploitation is a question that very few, beyond a limited

number of specialists, are able intelligently to answer. The

heterogeneous character of the West Indian political map of

to-day has behind it an interesting story, and one thoroughly

worth studying, for those who wish to grasp understandingly the

reasons for European interest in America before Spain lost her

various American colonies on the mainland. So far as the

immediate effects upon Europe were concerned, the beating

back of the Spanish frontier in the Caribbean regions by Spain’s

commercial rivals was far more important at the time than the

distant frontier struggles of Spaniards, Frenchmen, and English-

men on the mainland of America.



The present study is an attempt to separate from the tangled

skein of West Indian history the single small thread that con-

cerns the early efforts of Denmark-Norway to establish itself

in those distant regions. It is an attempt to explain the strange



(1]

2 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



fascination that drew the blonde and hardy blue-eyed traders

and sailors from the cold Baltic shores to distant tropical regions

where the bounties of Nature—it must often have seemed—only

served to lure the newcomer on to sickness and death.



Denmark possesses three small islands in the West Indies;

St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix. With the exception of a

few months in 1801 and the period 1807-1815, when England

seized them to prevent their being of use to Napoleon, with

whom Denmark was to all intents and purposes allied, they

have since remained continuously under Danish rule. St.

Thomas was first permanently settled by Danes in 1672; St.

John, although claimed as early as 1683, was not actually settled

until 1716-1717; St. Croix was purchased from France in 1738,

and settled by colonists from the other two islands early in 1735.

Spasmodic attempts at occupation had taken place before by

the Dutch and English on St. Thomas, and by French, Knights

of Malta, and miscellaneous rovers on St. Croix.



The total area of the three islands is but a trifle over one

hundred and thirty-two square miles, or about three and a half

townships. The acreage of St. Thomas is 18,080; of St. John,

12,780.8, and of St. Croix, 58,913.6.! At its greatest length, St.

Thomas extends about thirteen and three-fourths miles (22 km.),

its breadth at the town of Charlotte Amalia is but one and one-

half miles (2.8 km.), and its greatest width three and three-

fourths miles (6 km.). The two northern islands form part of

the Virgin island group, and all three belong to the group still

frequently designated as the L»eward Islands.? Together they

form part of the northwestern extremity of that “bow of Ulys-

ses”’ constituting the Lesser Antilles, stretching from Porto

Rico to the east and then southward in a mighty sweep of seven

hundred miles, ending at Trinidad off the South American main-

land. With the Greater Antilles aud the mainland, they enclose



1 Eggers (St. Croiz’s Flora, p. $8), gives 51,861 acres for St. Croix. The

figures quoted are taken from The National Geographic Magazine for July,

1916, p. 89.



1 The Leeward Islands include the Virgin Islands, St. Christopher (St. Kitts),

St. Eustatius, Antigua, Montserrat, Guadaloupe, Martinique, and their various

dependencies.



4 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



Besides the harbor, St. Thomas has along its coast line nu-

merous smaller indentations, usually referred to on the islands

as “bays,” although many are scarcely more than landing

places. It is the existence of such bays in this and in many

other West Indian islands that has made it practically im-

possible in the past for officials to put an end to smuggling.



_ Christian Martfeldt, a Danish economist who visited the islands

about 1765, listed and described forty-five such “bays” in St.

Thomas, and thirty-one in St. John. It is worthy of note that he

considered Coral (Craal) bay in St. John as not only a better

harbor than the one in St. Thomas, but the best in the entire

West Indies. It is in fact about twice as deep, and can hold

about twice as many vessels.° But St. Thomas harbor has al-

ways been quite large enough to accommodate such shipping as

came to it; hence the harbor of St. John, with perhaps greater

natural advantages, has been practically ignored in favor of

that of St. Thomas, which after all was first settled and lay

closer to Porto Rico.



Ships sailing for the West Indies steered for the islands off the

west African coast, whence they were swept on their way south-

westward by the tradewinds. The journey usually occupied

about seven or eight weeks, although under particularly favora-

ble circumstances it might be made in four. On the return trip

the vessel steered north and west of its outward course, passing

as a rule about two hundred miles to the east of the Bermudas.

The usual procedure for a ship from Copenhagen was to leave

in September or October for St. Thomas, remain there until the



5“In it [Coral Bay] 400 to 500 vessels large and small can ride at anchor.

It has various suitable landing places for the plantations lying round about,

separated from each other by out-jutting points which form the said bays.

Beside the 6 English families mentioned in the [appended] table there are 16

others, [which he names], from which one may perceive its great extent. It is,

besides, provided with a beautiful hurricane ‘hole’ on the east (north?) side,

where 40 to 50 vessels and more may lie safe against storms and so close in to

the shore that one may walk ashore on a board, not to mention those that can

lie in the ‘stream.’ In this hurricane hole . . . a number of careening places

could [easily] be constructed . . . where vessels could conveniently be ca-

reened.” Martfeldt, Samlinger ... Vol. III. Cf. Bryan Edwards, History

of the British Colonies in the West Indies, I, 459: “St. John is of importance as

having the best harbor of any island to the leeward of Antigua.”

INTRODUCTION 5



winter’s sugar cane crop had been harvested, boiled down and

put into casks, and then in April or May to sail for home with a

completed cargo.



Almost from the first, the chief product of the islands has

been sugar, although tobacco and cotton have played an im-

portant part in the economy of the islands at certain periods.

Their prosperity as plantation colonies has always been pecu-

larly dependent upon the rainfall. St. Thomas in particular °

has ever been subject to severe and protracted droughts, and

has not infrequently suffered from torrential downpours. “We

have had no rain for six months, and the cane is drying up in the

fields,” is a plaint frequently found in the reports of governors.

Nevertheless, St. Thomas and St. John are the most fertile of

the Virgin Islands.



The rains are on the whole fairly evenly distributed through

the seasons, though the period from the beginning of May till

the close of November is more subject to showers than the winter

months. The showers are usually local and of short duration;

hence it frequently happens that one plantation may have

plenty of rain while its neighbor suffers from drought.’ Dr.

Hornbech’s carefully kept meteorological journal shows an

average annual precipitation for St. Thomas of 43+ inches for

the decade, 1828-1838. On St. Croix, Major Lang made pains-

taking observations at the plantation Eliza’s Retreat, situated

four hundred feet above sea level and just east of Christiansted,

covering the period 1838 to 1861, and he found the annual rain-

fall there to be but thirty-seven and six-tenths inches. Egger’s

calculations for the whole of St. Croix for the years 1852 to 1873

give an average downpour of forty-four and forty-eight one

hundredths inches, indicating a fairly uniform rainfall on the

smaller islands.’



The species of calamity that strikes deepest terror in the

heart of the West Indian is the hurricane, and St. Thomas is



* In Bergsie (IV, 571 ef seq.) is given a thorough discussion of climatic condi-

tions on the Danish islands based in part upon the observations of Dr. Horn-

bech and Prof. Pedersen. See also Baron Eggers, St. Croiz’s Flora, pp. 41 et seq.



7 Eggers, p. 46, quotes A. S. Oersted’s estimate for the precipitation in the

southern part of Jamaica as forty-six inches.

6 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



one of those islands that has suffered most from hurricanes.

The custom that long prevailed on the Danish islands, of setting

aside two days for prayer, one on June 25 and the other on Oc-

tober 25, at the beginning and end of the “hurricane season,”

reflects the popular fear of these storms. They are not limited

altogether to these summer months, for according to an author-

ity whose work is dated 1853, one hundred and twenty-eight

destructive hurricanes have visited the West Indies during the

past three hundred and fifty-eight years, and of these, eleven

occurred in July, forty in August, twenty-eight in September,

and the remaining forty-nine during the other months.’



Besides being dangerous to human life on land and sea, they

may when violent, pull the roofs off the houses, uproot trees,

cast vessels in the harbors high up on the beach, and completely

demolish the growing crops. On August 31, 1772, St. Croix was

visited by a hurricane which was described in the local news-

paper * as the “most dreadful Hurricane known in the memory

of man.” It began about nightfall and “blew like great guns,

for about six hours, save for half an hour’s intermission.” The

shipping in the harbor was driven ashore, houses everywhere

were shattered, “the whole frame of nature seemed unhinged

and tottering to its fall . . . terrifying even the just, for who

could stand undisturbed amid the ruins of a falling world. . . .

A few such events would ruin us in temporals, but help us in

spirituals, and make us fit for the Kingdom of Heaven; for the

Turk, the Jew, the Atheist, the Protestant, and Papist would

join in unanimous prayer to appease the Lord of Hurri-

canes.”



This catastrophe, which cost the lives of seven whites and

nine negroes, was so eloquently described in a letter written

by a young counting house clerk on the island, Alexander

Hamilton, to his father, that attention was attracted to his

ability and he was sent to King’s College, New York, to com-

plete his education. The letter ” ran as follows:



* Bergsie, IV, 579, note.



® Royal Danish American Gaxette (St. Croix), Sept. 9, 1772.



» Ibid., Oct. 3, 1772. Mrs. Gertrude Atherton in A few of Hamilton's let-

tere . . . (New York, 1903), pp. 261 ef seq., quotes this letter in full.



8 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



the belt on the north side of the ridge west of Salt River, where

the most characteristic growth is the eriodendron, or silk cotton

tree. On St. Thomas the croton and eriodendron are found

chiefly on the southern slopes of the ridge." The northern

slopes of St. Thomas and St. John are reputed to be better

suited to plantation purposes than the southern. The former

island, practically a submerged fragment of mountain ridge,

varies in elevation from about one thousand two hundred and

fifty feet ($80 meters) near the west to about one hundred and

fifty to two hundred and fifty feet (45 to 75 meters) at its

broader eastern extremity. Settlers seeking plantation ground

had first to find a piece of grassland, if possible, or ground not

too thickly covered with bush or forest. Some fustic, pock-

wood, or mahogany was not objectionable, for the dyewood

often made a profitable ballast for a sugar and tobacco cargo,

while cabinet and building woods found a ready market in the

older English settlements to windward. Despite the fact that

St. Thomas and St. John were but poorly adapted to plantation

purposes as compared with St. Croix, which was the last island

occupied by the Danes, St. Thomas had acquired a prosperous

planting population before the close of the war of the Spanish

Succession in 1718, and had one hundred and sixty-six planta-

tions by the time St. Croix was purchased (1733); while St.

John, the permanent occupation of which began in the latter

part of 1716, had one hundred and three plantations surveyed or

assigned and nearly three-fourths of them under cultivation at

the same date.!?



The severest drawback, especially when the colony was new,

was the inevitable fever, probably mainly malarial. The white

inhabitants, governors, preachers, planters, seemed helpless

when the fever was rife; and epidemics of smallpox frequently

carried off great numbers of slaves. Newly arrived settlers, and

particularly recently imported soldiers, of whose habitual

drunkenness the governors constantly complained, were par-



11 Eggers, pp. 51 ff.; Bérgesen (Dansk Vestindien), pp. 601 ff.; Borgesen og

Paulsen, Om Vegetationen paa de dansk-vestindiske Oer, pp. 69 ff.



42 Land Lister for St. Thomas og St. Croiz. The usual size of a plantation was

$000 x 2000 feet. ,







10 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



breaking that commercial monopoly in East and West which

was now made doubly dangerous through the union of Spain

and Portugal. The Dutch continued, though with increasing

difficulty, to carry Far Eastern goods from Lisbon to the ports

of northern Europe. When, however, in 1595 Philip II caused

the seizure of four or five hundred Holland and Zeeland ships

then lying in Spanish and Portuguese harbors, it was clear to

the Dutch that a readjustment of their commercial methods

must take place before they could hope for good times. Jan

van Linschoten had already published some of those geograph-

ical and trade secrets long jealously guarded by the Portuguese,

and on April 2, 1595, ten rich Amsterdam merchants sent out a

fleet to the East Indies under Cornelis Houtman. Not until

July, 1597, did Houtman return to Amsterdam with three of his

four ships and only a third of his men, and with a small cargo for

his pains. The enterprise cost more than it yielded, but it

showed that with good fortune larger profits might be expected.



The entering wedge had been driven into the Portuguese

monopoly. Houtman’s voyage was followed by the organiza-

tion of other and competing Dutch companies, which were

finally on March 29, 1602, merged into one great organization,

the Dutch East India Company. Meantime Queen Elizabeth

had followed up the English victory over the Invincible Armada

in 1588, when the hollowness of the Spanish naval prestige had

been decisively demonstrated, by sending an expedition under

Captains Raymond and Lancaster in 1591 around the Cape of

Good Hope to Cape Comorin, Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula.

On December 31, 1600, the Queen granted a charter to “The

Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading to

the East Indies,” otherwise known as the London East India

Company.'* The organization of these two companies, English

and Dutch, was followed by that of French, Danish, and Swedish

companies, and marked the beginning of the end of Portuguese

monopoly in East Indian regions.'4



13 This is not to be confused with the English East India Company incor-

porated in 1698 and amalgamated with the above company in 1709. C. P.

Lucas, The Mediterranean and Eastern Colonies, p. 189, note.



1 A good working list of commercial companies organised in Europe from



12 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



used for the return trip to Europe from the Spanish Main and

the islands, were settled by the English in 1609-1616.% The

first footholds gained by the English in the West Indies them-

selves were in Barbados, just east of the Windward Islands, and

in St. Christopher (or St. Kitts) in the Leeward group. These

two islands became centers of English influence and settlement

in the West Indies. From St. Kitts, which was occupied jointly

by French and English in 1625, English settlers went in 1628 to

Nevis and Barbuda, and in 1682 to Antigua and Montserrat, all

of them islands belonging to the Leeward group. The Dutch

took joint possession of St. Croix with the English in 1625, and

seven years later stationed themselves in St. Eustatius, a tiny

island some half score miles to the northwest of St. Kitts, and

in Tobago, near Trinidad. Pushing down closer to the Spanish

Main and nearer to the isthmus of Panama, they occupied the

island of Curac&o, lying near the entrance to the gulf of Ven-

ezuela, in 1684. Saba, an islet near St. Eustatius, was occupied

in 1640."



The outlook for profitable trade in the West Indies had led the

Dutch to organize in 1621 a West India company which was to

become an important factor in the struggle of the Dutch state

with Spain. The next nation to found a West India company

was the French, which, under the encouragement of Richelieu,

formed in 1626 the Company of St. Christopher.” This was

reorganized in 1685 under the name of the Company of the Isles

of America. In the latter year the company began the settle-

ment of Guadaloupe, while a group of settlers from St. Kitts

established themselves at Martinique at about the same time.”!

Tortuga, or la Tortue, a little island off the north coast of His-

paniola (San Domingo) was likewise colonized by Protestant

settlers from St. Kitts who in 1640 joined a few Frenchmen who

had attempted settlement before but had been disturbed by

Spaniards. Some Frenchmen who had been driven from St.

Kitts by Spaniards in 1629 had settled on the north coast of



8 Lucas, II, 7 et seq.



9 Tbid., II, Sec. II, Ch. 1, passim.



*® Mims, Colbert's West India Policy, p. 15.

*! Ibid., 28, 26, 27.

INTRODUCTION 18



San Domingo, where they remained a small buccaneering and

filibustering colony until the time of Colbert.”



During this first half of the seventeenth century, the sugges-

tion for the formation of a West India company came up both

in England and Denmark, but without tangible result in either

case. English commercial companies were directing their chief

attentions in America to the Atlantic and Caribbean main-

land,* while Denmark, which had already entered the East

India field, was forced to neglect that for a considerable period

on account of more urgent affairs nearer home. Not until the

century was nearly three-fourths past was the latter state able

to devote itself seriously to American trade and coloniza-

tion.



But what was this Danish state, that could thus presume to

seek a share of the world’s newly opened commerce, that had

won a Hapsburg princess for one of its kings, that could venture

to send a prince to sue for the hand of Queen Elizabeth, that

had furnished an asylum for Bothwell on the death of Mary

Stuart and a queen for James VI of Scotland, and that had had a

king who had become for a time the recognized leader of Prot-

estant Europe? After the great outburst of activity in the

Viking Age, when the Northmen succeeded for a brief period

in maintaining a North Sea empire, the Scandinavian Jands had

passed through a period of strife with north German princes and

between local rulers. Out of this welter of conflict arose the

Union of Kalmar (1397) with Queen Margaret as the sole mon-

arch of the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

This union lasted with few interruptions until Sweden broke

away under the leadership of Gustav Eriksson (Gustavus Vasa)

in 1523. During this period of a century and a quarter, a

desperate struggle with the Hanseatic League for the control of

the Baltic and the North Sea had retarded the development of

commerce and sea power in the three kingdoms. Denmark had

long been the chief enemy of the League, and had been forced to

see Bergen arise as a rival to Copenhagen, although Bergen was

located in a land closely united to the Danish crown. Not until



2 Mims, Colbert's West India Policy, p. 29.

*? The Guinea Company was formed in 1609.

14 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



the reign of King Hans (+ 1513), was Denmark able to meet the

Hanseatic League in battle on an even footing and to curb its

privileges in Scandinavian cities. It was King Hans’ chief

glory that he furnished Denmark with a fleet and made her once

more a sea power.”4



The last ruler to hold the scepter of the three kingdoms,

Christian II, succeeded through the help of his uncle, Frederick

the Wise of Saxony, in negotiating a marriage with the mighty

house of Hapsburg. His queen, Elizabeth (Isabella) of Bur-

gundy, whom he married on August 12, 1514, was a sister of the

Archduke Charles, who ascended the imperial throne in 1519

as the Emperor Charles the Fifth. The king continued the

fight which he had begun while prince, with Liibeck and the

other Hanseatic cities, in his attempt to make Copenhagen a

staple city for the Baltic trade. After the suppression of a

Swedish uprising (1520) marked by the bloody “massacre of

Stockholm,” the king called certain Danish and Swedish mer-

chants into a conference at Stockholm with the idea of estab-

lishing a great northern commercial company with Copenhagen

and Stockholm as the leading centers. It was planned to have

smaller distributing centers in Finland and the Netherlands,

after the fashion of the Hanseatic League, which it was Chris-

tian’s design to crush. The king was even intending to send one

of his captains, Sdren (or Severin) Norby, to Greenland and

“India” (i. e., America) in search of a direct passage,* but be-

fore he could bring his plans to fruition, Gustav Eriksson had

led the uprising in Sweden which resulted in the breakup of the

Union of Kalmar and the accession of the rebel leader in 1523 as

King of Sweden under the title of Gustavus I (Vasa). In the

general crash Christian lost his throne, and plans for American

exploration were not seriously considered until nearly a century

later.



Meanwhile the feeling of nationality was gradually develop-

ing in Denmark. During the reign of Christian II the humanis-

tic movement had already gained considerable headway. The



4 Danmarks Riges Historie (Kibenhavn, 1897-1907, 6 v.), III (a), 138 (cited

hereafter as D. R. H.).



% D. R. H., Tl (a), 192, 246.



16 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



trade from the English and the Dutch. Denmark’s position in

the North makes it possible to understand how Frederick II

could venture to join the ranks of Queen Elizabeth’s suitors, and

how James VI of Scotland should be led there to seek his

bride.



By the time the young king, Christian IV, came of age,”

Denmark was recovering from the turbulent fever of the Ref-

ormation. Its resources were not strong enough, however, to

enable it to take part with the Dutch and the English in break-

ing the monopoly of the Portuguese and Spanish im the Far

East. Denmark was destined to play but a secondary part in

the history of those regions, but the fact that it was able to

play a part at all was due very largely to the vigorous policy of

Christian IV and his advisers, who knew how to make the most

of the growing feeling of nationality in the Danish-Norwegian

state. To be sure, the state still lacked in large measure two

essentials for successful trade; the right kind of men, and plenty

of money. This deficiency Christian IV hoped to supply from

the Protestant Netherlands, which in the beginning of his

reign, were still engaged in the struggle for their independence

from Spain. As early as 1607 he sent a capable envoy, Jonas

Charisius, to Amsterdam to encourage Dutchmen, artisans as

well as capitalists, to come to Denmark to live.™ Despite their

war with Spain, the Dutch did not flock to Denmark in very

great numbers, but enough came to affect profoundly the

commercial development of the country, as will presently

appear.



The king’s keen interest in exploration and the development

of trade led to the sending of three expeditions to Greenland in

1605, 1606, and 1607.*!_ The first two succeeded in landing on

the west coast, but failed to find any trace of the lost colonies,



* D. R. H., TI (b), 222.



*® Christian IV was born in 1577, was proclaimed king under a council of

regency on the death of his father in 1588, and assumed the government in

his own name in 1596.



In 1521, Christian IT had given over the little island of Amager near Copen-



hagen to 184 Dutch families who were brought in to encourage gardening.

D. R. H., Til (a), 26.



11. C. A. Gosch, Danish Aretic Expeditions, 1 (Hakluyt Soc.).



18 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



1621 to 1686.4 In organizing this company the Danes were

following closely in the footsteps of the Dutch, whose great

company had already scored some conspicuous successes. So

long as states did not possess navies strong or numerous enough

to patrol distant as well as home waters, the plan employed to

secure reasonable safety for trading vessels was for merchants

to band themselves together in joint-stock companies under

liberal charters from the crown and then send out, when neces-

sary, whole merchant fleets, properly armed, to Muscovy or

Turkey, to India or Cathay. These companies became the

instruments by which states fought each other openly or by

intrigue for the control of the foreign trade of alien lands. The

custom of issuing letters of marque and reprisal had become

prevalent in the wars of the sixteenth century. Privately owned

vessels were thereby permitted to make seizures of enemies’

ships. Hence trade by means of single private vessels became

exceedingly unsafe.



Danish merchants organized other companies for trade nearer

home. A company organized in 1619 secured a monopoly of the

trade with Iceland.** The salt and wine trade with Spain and

France had suffered so severely from captures and lack of

capital that the king, again taking his cue from the Dutch,

decided to have the trade carried on by a large number of com-

panies with seats to be located in the various cities of the king-

dom, that should serve as distributing centers. It was hoped to

produce a merchant fleet that would be of service in defence, but

the plan failed, and with its failure the whole scheme of govern-

mentally encouraged commercial companies received a serious

setback.™



It is interesting to note that in this period of commercial

activity, in which the king plays a leading part, we hear for the

first time of proposals for a Danish West India Company. They

come as one might expect, from a Dutchman, in fact from that

John de Willom who had helped in the organization of the East

India Company. On January 25, 1625, he received permission



%K, Larsen, I, 14 ef seq., 170.

35 D. R. H., IV, 104.

% Thid., 105, 109.



20 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



which she made important concessions concerning the Sound

duties. This was the beginning of Denmark’s actual decline as

a Baltic power.



Immediately on the accession of Charles X as king of Sweden

in 1654 began that series of wars which involved Sweden in

struggles with Poland, Brandenburg, the Empire, Russia, and

Denmark, and which finally ended, so far as the last named state

was concerned, in her humiliation by the peace of Copenhagen

(1660). Denmark lost the three southern provinces of the Swed-

ish peninsula, Scania, Halling, and Bleking, as well as her lord-

ship over the Sound. In this strenuous period, when the Danes

were fighting for their very existence as a nation, they had no

means or energy to devote to commerce with distant lands.

During the lull between the two Swedish wars, however, Henry

Miller, chief of the Copenhagen customs house and a man of

extensive manufacturing and trading interests, sent expeditions

to Greenland in 1652 and 1653. In the later year Frederick II

granted privileges to certain “participants” to engage in West

Indian trade. It was a grant, as the royal letter reads, “‘to our

subjects who have already sailed to the Caribbean islands in the

West Indies in a recent year, and who now desire with such

other shareholders as may join them to sail again to these

islands.” The privileges had mainly to do with Sound’ and

harbor dues and had nothing to say of occupation of any terri-

tory.“! The results were at first exceedingly meager. It appears

that in 1654, the year that Charles X began his martial career,

eleven ship owners from Elsinore ventured to send a single

ship to the West Indies.“



Though the beginnings were small and early efforts timid, the

possibilities of the Guinea-West Indies trade loomed large. It



No further expeditions appear to have visited Greenland until Hans Egede

went there to establish his famous mission in 1721. Thaarup, 365. The Dutch

had organized a Greenland company as early as 1614, but apparently made no

attempt at settlement. Bergste, Den danske Stats Statistik, IV, 507.



‘1 No. 78, Sjell. aabne Breve, Apr. 29, 1662 (Indlag).



42 Mads Mortensen, Joh. Hansen, Lambert Ebbesen, Jac. Albertsen, Isbrandt

V. Holten, Hans Jensen, Joan Wilders, and Hans Hansen, Herm. Voogt,

Berendt Willumsen, and Jan Hein. No. 73, Sjell. aabne Breve, Apr. 20, 1662

(Indlag, Mar. 5, 1653).



22 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



tainly it is difficult to imagine a more “efficient” government

than an absolute monarchy under a capable despot. Since it

was not until this reorganization of government had taken place

that the state assumed a leading and consistent part in en-

couraging commerce and industry, a brief summary of what

happened in 1660 will be appropriate.



There was felt a crying need, especially by the peasantry,

for a new order, and the nobility was held mainly responsible for

existing oppressive conditions. It was in fact chiefly upon the

peasants and burghers, assisted to some extent by the clergy,

that the king depended in putting through his coup d’éat. For

government by the king and estates, was substituted govern-

ment by the king alone, who delegated a large part of his work to

colleges or boards appointed by himself. Some of these as the

Privy Council (Rigsraadet), a remnant of the old order, the

Council of State (Statskollegiet), and the Board of Trade (Kom-

merce-kollegiet), were advisory; others, as the Danish and Ger-

man chanceries and the treasury board (Skatkammerkollegiet),

were administrative. The supreme court which had hitherto

been filled entirely by the nobility, now came under the Danish

chancery. The chancellor became its president, and trained

burghers were given seats in it. Besides these institutions,

which were inodified as conditions changed and circumstances

demanded it, special. commissions were at one time or another

appointed to investigate special subjects; sometimes the king

would issue acts or ordinances under his own hand, and some-

times one or another board would prepare an act which would

be issued from the royal chamber or cabinet.“ It was this con-

centration of power in the royal hands that made possible a

concentration of effort in matters of trade. About the time

when Danish and Norwegian merchants were beginning to

think seriously of securing the establishment of a chartered

company for trade with America (i. ¢., the West Indies), or of

making some arrangement with the French who were preparing



45 Meddelelser fra Arkivet, 1886-88, 65 et seq. D. R. H., IV, 470 et seg. “Cab-

inet Orders” play an important part during the Guldberg period (1772-1784)

when much of the government was carried on through orders made out by

advisers and signed by the king.



% THE DANISH WEST INDIES



seized the English part of St. Kitts, Antigua and Montserrat in

1667, only to give them back by the treaty of Breda in the same

year. The English in their turn had seized Surinam in South

America from the Dutch, but returned it in 1674 on the final

cession to England of New Amsterdam.



In Europe, the ambitions of Louis XIV were presently to

change the general aspect of affairs. The treaties of Breda were

followed by the Triple Alliance between England, the Nether-

lands and Sweden (1668). This alliance Louis immediately set

about to break; only by isolating the Netherlands could he

hope to carry out his plans on the Continent. He was aided in

this by the circumstance that Charles IT had scarcely any more

liking for the Dutch than Louis, and was quite inclined to lend

his aid to any scheme that promised to cripple or destroy the

United Netherlands. The secret treaty of Dover by which

Charles pledged his aid to Louis in the event of a war with the

Dutch was signed June 1, 1670. Under these circumstances an

alliance between England and Denmark would weaken the

Dutch and hence should add to the joy of France. And so it

happened that not later than June 21, 1670, Arthur Capel, first

Earl of Essex, left England for Copenhagen as ambassador ex-

traordinary to conclude a treaty of alliance with the new Danish

king, Christian V.®



Denmark’s interest in the West Indies was only secondary,

and was based upon the interest aroused in her merchants as a

result of recent voyages which will be considered later. What

English as well as French diplomacy played upon in Den-

mark was fear of Sweden and a feeling that the Dutch had long

treated them insolently in the Sound disputes and would be

“‘ever ready and resolute in defence of Hamburg, whenever the

Danes should have strength enough to attack it;” for Hamburg,

as Sir William Temple expressed it, was their “chief ambition

abroad, it seems.” 5!



In Europe England’s wars with the Dutch had materially



© Cal. Dom., 1670 and Add., 1660-1670, pp. 165, $78; Cal. Treas., 1669-1678,

v. 8, pt. 1 (Nov. 10, 1670). The refusal of Essex to strike his flag on entering

Danish waters created considerable stir in England.



51 Sir W. Temple, Works, II, 217 (London, 1814, 4 v.).



26 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



wood cutters were threatening to extend the English frontier

from Jamaica to the Spanish Main in the logwood district about

Campeachy and Honduras Bay.



The time had come for Spain to admit by treaty what was

already an established fact; that she no longer held a monopoly

over the Caribbean Islands. So while Essex was negotiating in

Copenhagen, Sir William Godolphin had been received in

Spain, where on April 18, 1670, he secured from Charles II of

Spain the Treaty of Madrid, “composing differences, restraining

depredations, and establishing peace” in America. For the

first time, Spain definitely recognized England’s right to possess

undisturbed the American islands and colonies which she

actually occupied, although the Pacific was to remain, as hereto-

fore, strictly a closed sea.** Before the news of the treaty could

be published in the English and Spanish colonies, the arch-

buccaneer, Henry Morgan, most notorious of his tribe, had led

an expedition which had sacked the two isthmian cities of Porto

Bello and Panama. The subsequent knighting of Morgan by

the king and his appointment as lieutenant-governor of Jamaica

were hardly calculated to inspire confidence in England’s inten-

tions to bring about peace in Caribbean waters. And yet, as we

shall see, an honest attempt was made in that direction in which

Sir Henry Morgan figured as the faithful representative of law

and order.



Though the treaty was far from instantaneous in its effects, it

furnished a basis for mutual relations and strengthened Eng-

land’s position in the West Indies to the extent that she was



53 An expedition from Jamaica had attacked the Castle of Santa Crus on the

Campeachy coast in February, 1668. Logwood cutting on the coast of Cam-

peachy, Honduras and Yucatan had begun among the English about 1665.

Haring, Buccaneers, 107, 208.



An interesting episode that forms a connecting link between the Elizabethan

struggle with Spain and the English conquest of Jamaica is the Puritan colonisa-

tion scheme of 1629-1640, when the Providence Company held the islands of

Providence (Santa Catalina), Henrietta (San Andreas), and Association (Tor-

tuga) until they were seized by the Spaniards. A detailed account is to be found

in A. P. Newton’s The Colonizing Activities of the Early Puritans (New Haven,

1914).



5 Haring, op. cit, 197.



28 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



able price on condition of Denmark’s receiving certain staple

rights in France, ¢. g., in La Rochelle and Nantes.



But Colbert’s idea was protection, not reciprocity. He had no

desire to encourage the establishment of a Danish West India

company that might become an active competitor with the Com-

pany of the North, so he turned the negotiations to the subject

of Dansborg, the Danish factory on the Malabar coast of India,

which he attempted in vain to buy for France. In these futile

negotiations the idea of codperating for the pursuit of West

Indian trade was lost sight of, and Danish merchants were left

to form their own company.*



Of the expeditions which were sent to the West Indies by

private Danish adventurers previous to the coup d état of 1660,

mention has already been made. It remains to consider 'those

expeditions which took place after the disastrous war with

Sweden, and which led eventually to the choice of St. Thomas as

the site of Denmark’s first West Indian colony. A memorial

dated February 15, 1662, and hitherto unpublished, epitomizes

the state of Danish trade in the West Indies during the troublous

years that had just passed. “‘We have to thank Your Majesty,”

runs the memorial, “most graciously and humbly for the priv-

ileges [to trade] upon the Caribbean islands, which were granted

to us several years ago, although by God’s will * we suffered

great losses on the journeys undertaken during those times, in-

asmuch as Cromwell and those ruling with him took away from

us two ships with cargoes, worth over $2,000 rdil. And besides,

one of our ships with full cargo and twenty-two persons was

swept away from the land by God’s weather, by the wind called

hurricane, on the 11th day of August, 1657, and never has there

been heard of ship or men since; so that we have suffered a very

great loss during the two years. Since that time we have been

unable to continue our voyages thence, both for the reasons

given and because of the dangers due to the present wars. .

Meantime our former privileges have expired, and we have

again undertaken in the Lord’s name to have our former skipper,



® Knud Fabricius, “‘ Colbert og Danmark . . .” (Historisk Tidsskrift, 8 R.,



IV, Till.).

57 Gud bedred disverr.

INTRODUCTION 29



Erik Nielsen Schmidt, navigate these islands in the good hope

that God Almighty will grant us some share of the good things of

the land by way of restitution for our former losses. We pray

Your Majesty to renew the grant of our former privileges for

another term of years.” Hans Nansen, Schmidt, and three

others * signed their names to the petition which was granted °°

substantially in the form asked, for “the present year” only.



The Hans Nansen who signed this petition appears to have

been the son of the wealthy burgher and Iceland merchant of the

same name. After attendance in a Copenhagen “Latin school”

he had been sent to Danzig in 1652 to learn bookkeeping, and

went thereafter on business missions to Prussia, the United

Netherlands, and Iceland. In 1655 he was the “winter mer-

chant” of the Iceland-Fseré company; in the winters of 1656-

1657 he was in Amsterdam learning seamanship and nautical

mathematics. In the summer of 1657 he was made merchant

in Iceland for the new company; the year following he was in

Gitickstadt and Hamburg. During the last Swedish war, being

unable to return to Copenhagen, he was in business for his

associates and himself in Hamburg, Gltickstadt and Iceland.

He was certainly one of the organizers of the West India Com-

pany in 1671, and may be taken as a type of the shrewd, ad-

venturous entrepreneurs of the age of the commercial com-

panies.



The skipper, Erik Nielsen Schmidt, was evidently selected for

his knowledge of West Indian waters and conditions. How

many previous voyages their “former skipper” may have made,

it is impossible to say, but he is certainly found on February 25,

1668, passing through the Sound with a cargo of tobacco, ginger,

etc., from the West Indies; ® he is referred to in a contract dated

June 8, 1665, at Copenhagen as royal commandant and governor

of the island of St. Thomas.*! On July 1 he passed Elsinore with



* No. 78, Sjall. aabne Breve, April 29, 1662 (Indlag). Find Nielsen, Chris-

toffer Hanse, and Jérgen Hansen Raffn. Schmidt’s name appears as Erich

Nielsen Sckmit in the document, and is signed Erich Nielsen Smit.



bed It was granted on April 29, 1662, udi nerverende Aar.



© Oresundstoldregnskabet for 1663.

*' In Kirkehist, Saml., 5 R. II B., pp. 298 et seg. E. V. Lose quotes in extenso

the contract entered into between Schmidt and Kield Jensen Slagelse, the

30 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



a cargo of provisions bound for the West Indies.*? Early in 1666

(February 15) he sent a small cargo containing three hundred

“rolls” of tobacco and one and one-half hhds. of sugar to Co-

penhagen.“ Not long thereafter, in the same year, he died at

St. Thomas. The Lutheran minister, Kjeld Jensen Slagelse,

seems to have succeeded him and to have returned to Denmark

with the remaining colonists. The last ship from the West

Indies recorded as passing through the Sound before the or-

ganization of the Company in 1671, and probably the one by

which the St. Thomas colonists came, sailed into Copenhagen

harbor on August 30, 1666, under Holger Freder’s command.

The cargo contained 50,000 Ibs. of pockwood, 20,000 Ibs. of

sugar, and 70,000 Ibs. of tobacco,** which may partly have been

bought on French or English islands,



Such then, in its main features, was that long train of cir-

cumstances that had attracted the interest of kings and sub-

jects of Denmark-Norway to the western world, and particu-

larly to those parts adjacent to the Spanish Main. The success

of those trading vessels that had returned with fair cargoes from

successful ventures in those distant tropical waters had at least

served to whet the appetites of Danish-Norwegian merchants

and skippers. They began to hope that by following the course

laid out by other western European states, notably the Dutch

and the English, they, too, might secure some share in that

commerce of which Spain was finding it increasingly difficult to

keep a monopoly. It remains to explain how Danish mer-

chants were able through a royally chartered commercial com-

pany to gain for the state a permanent foothold in those regions.



Lutheran minister who was to accompany him. A copy of the same is to be

found in the Bancroft Collection, but the date given is 1655.



*2 Oresundstoldregnskabet for 1655.



8 Tbid. for 1666.



4 Tbid. for 1666.

CHAPTER I

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COMPANY



By 1671, circumstances were more favorable to the establish-

ment of a Danish West India Company with broad powers and

considerable latitude of action than at any previous time. The

several expeditions already described gave sufficient encourage-

ment to suggest a more ambitious plan for getting into the field

of Caribbean commerce. An unoccupied island with an excel-

lent harbor had been found, the peaceful occupying and retain-

ing of which had become a more likely possibility as a result

of recent diplomatic developments in Europe. The newly

founded Board of Trade took on a new lease of life after the

accession to the throne of the new king, Christian V, in 1670.

On September 22 of that year the Board received its first official

instructions, and presently it was organized with Frederick

Ulrik Gyldenléve, the illegitimate son of the king, as its president

and Jens Juel, a statesman and diplomatist and a brother of the

famous admiral, as vice-president. The remaining members

included the well-known merchant Hans Nansen, Peter Peterson

Lerke, the Danish master of the mint, Andrew Timpf who had

held a similar position in Poland, Gabriel Marselis, a reputable

Dutch merchant, and as secretary, Melkior Rotlin, formerly

employed in Bergen as secretary of the Liibeck office.!_ To these

men the king’s trusted adviser, Peter Schumacher (created

Count Griffenfeld and made Chancellor in 1673) lent his en-

thusiastic support in all matters pertaining to the encourage-

ment of trade and industry.2, On November 20, 1670, the second

Danish East India Company was organized and given a charter

for forty years. On the eleventh day of the following March,



1K. Fabricius, Griffenfeld (Kébenhavn, 1910), 160, 166. The contemporary

spelling of Lerke’s name is Lerche.

1D. R. H., TV, 589.



(31 ]

32 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



the Danish West India Company received its charter from the

royal hand.? In America and the Far East Denmark was

planning to enter into commercial competition with her enter-

prising neighbors.



As directors of the West India Company the king named three

of the members (“‘assessors” or judges) of the Board of Trade,

Jens Juel, Peter Lerke, and the burgher, Hans Nansen,‘ the

’ last named on the nomination of Peter Schumacher.



This charter, like the usual seventeenth century commercial

company charters, conferred very broad powers upon the com-

pany. In describing it, reference will be made by way of com-

parison with an organization established just the year before,

the continuous existence of which from that day to this renders

it unique in the annals of chartered companies, namely, the

Hudson Bay Company, whose official corporate title was “the

governor and company of Adventurers of England trading into

Hudson Bay.” The English had no company exactly corre-

sponding to the Danish company. The Royal African Com-

pany, founded in 1672, made Guinea the main scene of its

operations, with the British islands in the West Indies the chief

market for what soon came to be their principal article of com-

merce, African slaves. But the Hudson Bay Company was,

like the Danish, intended for the exploitation of the New World

and offers at its inception, despite the different nature of its

sphere of action, some interesting resemblances to its con-

temporary.



The charter issued by Christian V authorized the Danish

West India Company to occupy and take possession of the

island of St. Thomas “and also such other islands thereabouts or

near the mainland of America as might be uninhabited and



7C. P. Lucas, II, 52, III, 67, mistakenly places the incorporation of the

company in 1784. For the second East India Company, see Kay Larsen, De

dansk-ostindiske Koloniers Historie (Kébenhavn, 1907), I, 48.



4P. Mariager, Historisk Efterretning over de Vestindiske og Guinciske Com-

pagnics Etablissementer udi Vestindien og Guinea, p. 2. This manuscript work

by a bookkeeper of the Company is in the Royal Library at Copenhagen and is

of prime importance. (Cited hereafter as Mariager MS.)



Hans Nansen was also a judge on the Admiralty Board, and later became, ag

his father had been before him, president of the city of Copenhagen (1688).



34 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



himself a large fraction of his tribe, finally was punished by the

loss of a leg for his various attempts at running away®



Besides the three royally appointed directors, two of whom

were nobles, three were to be elected by the shareholders

(“participants”) from among themselves by a majority vote,

those chosen being required to have a minimum of 2,000 “Slet-

tedaler” invested in the Company’s stock.? A paragraph ({18)

the consequences of which the promoters could not have fore-

seen was that which provided for the upkeep of the population

of the young colony by the promise of as many of the men

condemned in the home country to labor in irons or to serve in

prison as the company might deem necessary for its plantations,

and as many as they might wish of those women whose dis-

orderly lives had brought them into arrest in the “spinning

house” and other places. This was not the first time that

Europe deliberately planned to empty her jails on American

soil nor was it to be the last time, but on St. Thomas as in the

English colonies, the authorities soon learned that convicts

were not deemed good timber for plantations by the colonial

officials. Not like the English company, where the owner of

each block of stock worth £100 was entitled to vote, the Danish

company gave each shareholder one vote, and only one vote.

The minimum size of the shares was one hundred rixdollars.

The Company received free use of rooms in the Copenhagen

Stock Exchange, and was provided with suitable pack house

quarters on “Holmen” near the present site of “Holmens”

church. The king, the queen, and Prince George, each sus-

scribed 3,000 Slettedaler, while the total amount of this first

subscription was 64,800 sidl., which was to be paid in three



® Even the negroes did not become the objects of serious missionary effort

until the arrival of the Moravian missionaries in 1782, and then the impetus

came from circles entirely outside of the official class.



* A Slettedaler = 64 Skilling; a rigadaler (rixdollar) = 96 Skilling = 6 Mark.

1 pesos = 8 reals = 96 granos (or 48 stivers). A rixdollar was about equal to

& pesos or piece-of-eight, and to four kroner (1 Kr. = §0.275) in present day

coin. The purchasing value during the Company’s career was perhaps two to

three times that of the present time in Denmark. On money values, see D. R. H.,

TV, 108, note; W. Scharling, Pengenes synkende Vardi (Kdbenhavn, 1869);

Arent Berntsen, Danmark og Norges Frugtbar Herlighed. (Kjdbenhavn, 1656).



86 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



ship that left Elsinore in 1654. It is at any rate certain that he

entered the service of an English merchant on St. Christopher

(St. Kitts), and that about 1660 he returned to Europe with a

Dutch merchant. There he joined a company including three

business men from Zeeland, of whom one John Basselaer, was the

leader; Iversen participated in the enterprise, holding one-sixth

of the capital. He was himself to accompany the ship to the

West Indies and to take charge of the trade there, of which he

was to enjoy one-half of the profits.



All went on smoothly until 1665, when Iversen returned to

Europe and there learned that war had broken out between

England and the Netherlands. This information was brought

in upon him in a way that was not to be mistaken, and he paid

dearly for his instruction. His ship and cargo were seized

by an English privateer. The skipper himself went to Copen-

hagen hoping to obtain restitution through diplomatic channels.

Admiral Henry Bjelke procured him an audience with Fred-

erick III. The king not only acceded to Iversen’s desire that

Charles II of England be petitioned to deliver over to the in-

jured party his share of the damages, estimated at 3,000 rdl.,

but had Iversen come to him three times to tell him concerning

life in the New World and of his personal experiences there.

Inasmuch as the Danes appeared to show too much sympathy

with the Dutch, and particularly since the failure of the Danes

to codperate with the English fleet in capturing the Dutch

East Indiamen in Bergen harbor, Iversen’s petition came to

nothing. Although he kept up his connections with his Zeeland

partners, he appears to have remained in Denmark during the

years following. In 1670, the year of the embassy of Essex, he

was married “in the house,” a distinction which indicates a

fairly high social position, and with other evidences, shows him

still to have been a man of some means, despite his severe

loss.



The newly elected governor invested 1,000 rdJ. in the West

Indian enterprise at the start. He also took charge of fitting

out two ships provided by the new king, Christian V, for the

use of the Company. About 20,000 rdl. were expended in the

outfitting. Captain Arent Henriksen, a Dutch skipper, took



88 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



was sufficiently in demand in Denmark to furnish a profitable

ballast for returning ships during the earlier years of the colony.

The problem of securing cane for the newly cleared patches of

plantation ground was solved by the aid of the English, who had

recently seized Tortola, a little island just northwest of St.

John, from the Dutch. The English officer ” in charge there

generously gave the Danes full permission to use anything they

found on the island, and they made no find more precious than

the shoots of sugar cane.



The new masters had scarcely begun settlement, before

colonists of various sorts began to seep in. The greater number

of them belonged to the Dutch nation, and were seeking the

protection of a state that they supposed to be on friendly terms

with the English, who were harrying the Dutch wherever they

dared. Some of these, as John von Beverhoudt, became plant-

ers of distinction and even founded influential families; others,

like Carl Baggaert, an absconder from Middelburg, became

trouble makers who soured the life of the governor and those in

authority with him. Although French, Germans, English, and

Jews were among these early settlers, Dutch became the pre-

vailing language from the beginning.



To keep such a variously confused assemblage in reasonable

restraint while the necessary pioneering work was being done,

was the new governor’s task. That Iversen should succeed in

laying the foundation of a civil government out of the crude

materials that he had at hand was in itself a creditable per-

formance, and something for which his masters had reason to

be grateful. But in putting through this pioneer work one is not

surprised to find that he gained for himself a reputation for

severity that made the directors declare that Governor Iver-

sen’s brutal management “has given the Company such a bad

reputation among the common people in Denmark that they

are of the opinion that if they should serve in the West Indies

they would be worse off than if they had served in Barbary.”

There was indeed considerable ground for such a belief, and the

fault did not all lie with Iversen’s government.



Spoken of by Krarup (Jérgen Iversen, 28) ag Burd.



40 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



lem clamoring for solution was that of labor supply.” As early

as the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the Spanish

government began to concern itself with the preservation of the

aborigines, who proved unadaptable to severe labor, African

slaves had been resorted to as a substitute for native and white

labor.??_ White convict labor was cursed at in Virginia, Barbados

and Martinique as heartily as at St. Thomas. Indentured

servants were among those who accompanied Governor Iversen

on the initial voyage; but fevers, climate, and careless living

killed them off faster than they could be replaced. This labor

difficulty seems to have been anticipated in the charter to some

extent when provision was made for absorption of the African

company of Gltickstadt into the West India Company.™ The

union was in fact complete November 28, 1674, when Christian V

issued an edict allowing the Danish West India Company to

trade on the Guinea coast.24 Meanwhile the African company

had sent over a ship to Guinea in 1678 which added one hundred

and three slaves to the St. Thomas labor supply; 7° some smaller

purchases were made from local dealers, and another voyage

was taken by the Cornelia in the summer following, probably for

the same company.”



In 1675 a Portuguese bark was found wrecked on the shore

with a slave cargo, from which were secured twenty-four

wretched negroes, of whom ten survived long enough to be

entered on the books of the Company. The Dutch traders

seemed peculiarly gifted with the power to scent a bargain from

afar, whether in slaves, sugar, or silks. A certain Landert van



11 See Mims, Colbert's West India Policy, p. 283, for a statement of the con-

ditions in the French islands; also Pierre Heinrich, La Louisiane sous la Com-

pagnie des Indes, pp. $2 e seq.



2G. Scelle, La traité negrizre aur Indes de Castille (Paris, 1906), I, 123-128,

139-161.



23 See ¥ 16 of octroi.



4 Krarup, Jérgen Iversen, 31. Christiansborg Castle, near Accra on the

Guinea coast, had been built by the Swedes in 1645 and captured from them by

the Danes in 1657. The history of the Gltickstadt African Company up to the

date of its merger with the Danish West India Company is exceedingly meager.

Denmark finally sold its African possessions to Great Britain in 1850.



%3 Mariager MS., 22.



“LL. Fogtman, Alphabetisk Register . . . (see July 10, 1674).



42 THE DANISH WEST INDIES

and gradually the pretensions of the Spaniards dwindled down



for the time to an occasional more or less innocuous reference.”

The French had no valid grounds for protest. Their nearest

colony was St. Croix which had been taken from the Spaniards

in 1650 by an expedition sent by de Poincy from St. Christopher.

Colbert, in his efforts to build up French commercial power, had

practically closed French colonies to foreign trade, but the

Dutch wars of Louis XIV made traffic between France and her

West Indian colonies so precarious that Governor de Baas of

St. Croix was forced in 1678 to open the island to Danish com-

merce during six months to save his people from starving.”

But when Denmark joined in the war against the French, this

trade ceased, and the St. Thomas creditors were left with some

thousands of rixdollars worth of valueless paper on their hands.**



The news that war had broken out came in September, 1675,

and for the time being the French contented themselves with

seizing the Company’s yacht at St. Croix. Finally, on Feb-

ruary 2, 1678, the French actually attacked St. Thomas. Gov-

ernor Iversen had made valiant efforts to complete the fort to

the point where it could withstand attack; a tower had recently

been finished, and when requested to surrender he was able to

bid the enemy defiance. The French left after carrying off a

few slaves and some free negroes. After their departure the

work on the fort was continued with greater vigor than ever so

that by 1680 the governor was able to record that the fort was

completed. With the one hundred and fifty men, white and

black, that he had available, he felt himself able, so he reported

to his masters, to beat off six hundred or even one thousand

men,



But the strenuous work involved in preparation against out-

side attack had driven the planters as well as the governor al-

most to desperation. With the malcontents under the Dutch-

man Baggaert against him, with his health undermined by the

strain of responsibility, and his temper becoming more and



2 Mariager MS., 18, 19.



%° Mims, $23; Krarup, Iversen, 35.



#1 ‘Debtors on St. Croix” were still in 1708 debited with 2,298 rdJ., 5 marks in

the Company’s books at St. Thomas. N. J. for St. Th., 1705-1708.



4A THE DANISH WEST INDIES



come to a low pass largely because of the reaction of conditions

in Europe upon the commercial situation both in the capital and

in the colony.



In carrying out his second war against the Dutch, Louis XIV

had indeed secured the assistance of the former ally of the

United Provinces, Sweden, and for a time that of England. The

Netherlands were allied from the first with the Hohenzollern

elector of Brandenburg and were later to be joined by the Em-

peror and by their traditional enemy, Spain. Into this armed

camp Denmark threw herself on the side of the Dutch, but

against the Swedes, from whom she hoped to regain her lost

provinces. Such a state of war not only militated against the

success of the Company’s efforts, but threatened the very

existence of its American factory.



for these return cargoes at the same rate of ten per cent. Each of the Danish

skippers was to bring to St. Thomas two capable workingmen, for whom the

Company would pay 10 rdl. each; while each failure to make such delivery was

to be penalized by a fine of 20 rdl.



This was very similar to the Arrét promulgated by Colbert, January 22, 1671,

to encourage the importation of white servants. Vessels of 100 tons or over

were to carry two cows or two mares, and those of less to carry two indentured

servants in place of each cow or mare. Mims, op. cit., 28%. Three Bergen

merchants, Jérgen Thormihlen, Cordt von Woyda, and Daniel Wolezman,

received permission to send ships to the West Indies in this trade. A Christiania

ship seems to have got to St. Thomas with a passport from the king, but with-

out the knowledge or permission of the directors. Mariager MS., 26-28.

CHAPTER II

THE CRITICAL PERIOD (1680-1690)



Tue conclusion of the peace with Sweden in 1679 was followed

by a series of efforts on the part of the Danish crown to revive

and quicken the economic life of the kingdom. The Board of

Trade applied itself anew to the task, and a special commission

with Jens Juel at its head was created in September, 1681, to

supplement that body.! In this revival of interest in commer-

cial and kindred matters, the West India and Guinea venture

came in for its share of attention. On March 8, 1680, the king

issued an order, the provisions of which indicate clearly the low

state of the company and the heroic measures necessary to fan

into a flame its spark of remaining life. In this order the king

pledged his assistance by offering to fit out and send a ship to v

Guinea to fetch slaves for use in St. Thomas; and he promised to

send the needed number of men to the Guinea forts, which were

sadly in need of assistance.” The resolution of February 8,

1675, confiscating to the Company the capital of participants —

who had not paid in their full quota was confirmed, and now

each shareholder was assessed an amount equal to ten per cent.

of the par value of his share. If he failed to pay, he was liable

to lose his entire investment. Moreover, all government em-

ployees in his majesty’s dominions were “invited” to invest

ten per cent. of their salary, if the latter was over 800 rdl. a year,

in shares; if they had not paid in the required amount within

four or six weeks, it would be deducted from their salaries.

Finally, the king reached out after those wealthy but apathetic

burghers and others who had hitherto refrained from investing

or had been unduly cautious, by requiring that all carriage



1 Other members of this commission were Michael Vibe, Peter Brandt, Paul

Rosenpalm, and “‘procureur-général” Peter Scavenius. D. R. H., IV, 615.

3 Mariager MS., 37, 38.

[45]

46 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



owners whose shares did not amount to 500 sidl. must invest

60 rdl. once for all.



Whatever the king and company’s directors might propose,

it was after all the servants of the company in the West Indies

and on the Guinea coast on whom would rest the duty of dis-

posing; and the success of their efforts would be largely condi-

tioned by various external circumstances over which they had no

control. To carry out the details required by this scheme of

rehabilitation and readjustment, a committee of four * headed

by Herman Meyer, councilor of war, admiralty and commerce,

was appointed to take charge of supplying the Guinea forts with

men and munitions and equipping ships for both Guinea and the

West Indies. The result was that the Merman was sent out to

Guinea ‘ under Captain Ove Ovesen, who took with him a new

merchant and commander for the Guinea factory, while the

Crowned Griffin was sent to St. Thomas, passing Kronborg castle

on September 4, 1680, under Captain John Blom.*



The home authorities had done all that they could, and as-

suredly no less than was needed. It remained to be seen to what

extent their efforts would be seconded by their employees and

favored by circumstances. The new governor of St. Thomas,

Nicholas Esmit, had given the directors plenty of promises, but



had been unable to produce any recommendations. The pend-

ing resignation of Iversen gave them no time to search about for

candidates. Esmit claimed to have been a skipper, called him-

self captain, and asserted that he had served his apprenticeship

with the English at Jamaica. His name Esmit was probably



* The others were Peter Bladt, Assessor in the Board of Trade, Maurits van

der Thy, and Claus Sohn.



‘No pass appears to be recorded in Vestindisk Reg. 1671-99 for this ship.

Merman = Hafmanden or Hasmanden.



5 Mariager MS., 84 et seq.; Vest. Reg., 1671-99. The Crowned Grifin = den

Cronede Griff.



48 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



on the frontier between the Spaniards and the English. This

frontier had been pushed forward by a straight conquest to in-

clude Jamaica; buccaneers had made sport of it and were finally

to extend it permanently into Campeachy. It was in this twi-

light zone, haunted by buccaneers and men of their type, that

St. Thomas had found itself since its settlement. To keep the

island out of complications with its powerful neighbor required

more firmness and clear-headedness than was possessed by

Nicholas Esmit. Of his early history as governor only a few en-

lightening documents exist, but a letter written by him to the

directors May 17, 1682, is sufficiently illustrative of the ways of

the privateers and of their reception in St. Thomas to justify

quotation:



“There arrived here February 8 [1682] a ship of unknown

origin, some two hundred tons in size, without guns, passport or

letters, and with seven men, French, English, and German. On

being questioned they replied that they had gone out of Es-

paniola [Hispaniola] from the harbor of Petit Guava (sic) with

two hundred men and a French commission to cruise on the

Spaniards. They had come to the coast of Terra Firma and

landed in the river of Danan [Darien?] where they were joined

by the wild Indians who were to show them the way over the

land to the South Sea, which they also did; . . . and they took a

little ship or bark with a hundred blocks [bars?] of silver, next a

large vessel, and finally a Spanish galleon, with which they did

much damage over all the South Sea; and after having robbed

for two years in the South Seas, they escaped around Terra de

fago [del Fuego] . . . and on January 28 came to anchor in

Antigo [Antigua], where all the English in the crew went over

on the English ship with all their gold and silver. The rest,

namely seven men, who had risked [?] and doubled their money,

sailed for Petit Goava, but on the way the boat leaked, so they

asked to come in to St. Thomas and there careen the boat,

which was done at Strand Slucken [Gregerie Beach?] by the aid

of thirty men sent out by me. I bought what little cacao they

had, the rest of their plunder they brought ashore and divided

among our people. The ship was no longer usable. I have

decided not to confiscate it, in order to avoid any unfriendliness



50 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



the island within a fortnight. The order was signed by Bag-

gaert and one Jochum Delicaet, a wily Dutchman who will

come in for attention later. Before Governor Stapleton could

get a chance to secure the delivery of the sloop to him, Nicholas

Esmit was replaced by his brother Adolph, who had become the

leader of a faction of the more unruly planters.” Adolph was

shifty, shrewd, vain, and at times boastful, and an exceedingly

exasperating neighbor to deal with.



It is in the period when the Esmit brothers were responsible

for the government of St. Thomas, that the island gained its

reputation as a resort for pirates. For that reason their relations

with pirates, or with persons suspected of being such, deserve to

be examined with some minuteness. On October 7, 1782,

Governor Stapleton sent Thomas Biss, his deputy on Tortola,

to “the Honorable Governor Esmit in St. Thomas Island,” for

to have written “of St. Thomas Island”’ would have been an

official recognition of the usurpation. On the demand of Biss

for the restoration of a sloop, which he maintained had been

seized from its lawful owner, as well as on the request for the de-

livery of seven white servants who had run away from Mont-

serrat, Adolph Esmit gave contradictory and evasive answers.

When the English official demanded the runaway servants,

Esmit had replied that this was a free port |! and that anyone

asking for protection was entitled to it. “‘Sir,” was the reply of

Biss, “if your port is free, why did you seize the sloop? If some

rogues have freedom here, why not all?” 1?



Later, in a communication to Biss, Esmit offered to restore the

sloop (which he had already sold at auction for twenty-five

pieces of eight) on the presentation of a certificate from Gover-



°A.E., .. . 1688-85, “Lit. A.” and “Lit. B.” appended to A. Eamit’s letter

to the king (1 Sept., 1688). Delicaet’s first name was frequently spelled Jo-

achim.



On $ August, 1682, Nicholas had discharged a debt of 3,000 rdl. to his

brother, described in the document as “young of years and faithful,” by deeding

him his share of a plantation 3,000 feet long and stocked with 37 slaves,

houses, indigo, “‘works,” etc. The deposing of Nicholas took place in the

autumn. (B. & D., 1683-89.)



41 This appears to be the first reference to St. Thomas as a free port.



18 Cal. Col., 1681-85, No. 777 (11 Nov., 1682).



52 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



Sunderland, with a request for the restoration of the sloop and

servants." Within a fortnight the Danish king had written a

vigorous letter to Esmit rebuking him and ordering him to

restore ship and fugitive servants forthwith, on pain of summary

punishment of death. Further complaint of violence would

certainly bring this punishment upon him.”



It could assuredly not have missed the observation of the

de facto governor that serious trouble was in the wind; and so

long as he had secured no commission, his position was bound to

be exceedingly precarious. The directors of the company in

Copenhagen had early learned of Nicholas Esmit’s doings at

St. Thomas, and decided to have him replaced at the earliest

opportunity by a more likely incumbent. In March 1682

George Iversen who had recuperated from his severe expe-

rience again sought his former post. In this and in his plans for

strengthening the colony by another consignment of convicts

Iversen was supported by Jens Juel and Albert Gyldensparre

who with Edward Holst, assumed the direction of the company’s

affairs in 1682, on the resignation of Hans Nansen and Herman

Meyer.'® The governor-elect received his commission Septem-

ber 26, 1682, his final instructions on October 28, and left

Elsinore on November 10, just when Stapleton was formulating

his charges against Adolph Esmit. But Iversen was never to

reach his destination, for after he had passed the Azores, he and

those in authority with him fell victims to a mutiny instigated

by their convict cargo.”



As the news of this latest misfortune was reaching the direc-

tors at Copenhagen, Adolph Esmit was sending his recently

married English wife Charity to Denmark to plead his case and

procure him a commission.” He sent in numerous documents



6 Cal. Col., 1681-85, No. 998 (Mar. 8, 1683).



" Tbid., No. 10083 (Mar. 17, 1688). Another copy of the same docu-

ment has been calendared by mistake under date of Mar. 17, 1684 (No.

1597).



18 Mariager MS., 44.



19 Krarup, Iversen, 4S ef seq. Most of the mutineers were caught and horribly

put to death in Copenhagen. Cf. Haring, Buccaneers, 287, where “Everson”

is confused with Milan.



” A. E., 1682-89 (May 1, 1688).



54 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



captain sent a protest to the governor concerning the shooting,

and planned to burn up the pirate ship that night. The gover-

nor’s explanation that he had already taken her into custody

and sent her men ashore did not help matters, for in that case

he was responsible for the firing on the English flag. Esmit’s

efforts to cajole Carlile ashore by sending him a present and an

invitation to dine were too transparent to succeed. Carlile was

in no mood to risk a delay that might bring in the pirate ship’s

consort, which was daily expected, so he sent his men on board

her that evening (Tuesday) and fired her. In the conflagration,

another privateer lying near at hand caught fire and was burned.



In vain did Esmit fulminate against this confessedly high-

handed measure and against Carlile’s threat to summon three

more frigates to his assistance if Esmit did not deliver up the

pirate Englishmen who were ashore. Esmit admitted the

firing of a shot from the castle but maintained that his purpose

was merely to secure due salute. Since he was accused of undue

intimacy with pirates, he sent over in irons the man who fired

the shot. The rest, he explained, had fied.*



Esmit’s first care was to notify the French governor of St.

Croix, for the French might be expected to put in a claim for the

restitution of property belonging to one of their subjects,”

although in his claim to Carlile Esmit argued that the frigate

belonged to the King of Denmark. Stapleton had now secured

the means by which he could back up his words with powder

and ball, and was prepared to press his advantage. On Au-

gust 15 he demanded that Esmit deliver up Jean Hamlin, whom

the St. Thomas governor had evidently befriended. “Have a

care,” he wrote, “‘I shall come from the Leeward Islands with

an armed force, blow you up as quickly as the Trompeuse, and

pound any pirate that you may have fitted out. If you have a

spark of honesty in you restore me the sloop and runaway serv-



35 Cal. Col., 1681-85, Nos. 1168, 1178, 1188, 1190; A. E., 1682-89 (Aug. 1,

1683).



bad void, No. 1178. Esmit to Stapleton (Aug. 1, 1683).



= Ibid., No. 1881. The Chevalier of St. Laurens, French governor

of Martinique, sent a protest to Governor Stapleton Nov. 13, 1688, main-



taining not without reason that his men should have spared the ships and

punished the pirates.



56 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



nor her husband was slow to take advantage. Difficulty of

communication between new and old world meant that the

offences and grievances of the summer, which had been accu-

mulating in London and Copenhagen, became the topic of dip-

lomatic negotiation in the winter following. The commission

arrived none too soon, for malcontents within the colony were

already plotting Adolph Esmit’s overthrow. Now that he was

governor in his own right, he could proceed against his local

enemies with a vigor born of authority. The first to become

a target for the governor’s wrath was the leader of the plot, Otto

Eden, who was condemned to death in the month following

Madame’s return.** His two chief accomplices got off with fines,

and banishment to their plantations for nine months.» Esmit

showed very much the same instability of character in dealing

with the inhabitants, that he showed in his relations with his

neighbors on other islands. The return of Madame Esmit

could not but further embitter the life of the conscientious, if

irascible, Stapleton. “Never was like impudence on the earth

as of Esmit and his wife,” he wrote to the Lords of Trade, Feb-

ruary 18, 1684. “She gives out that she is the relict of an

English baron.”



Had Governor Iversen lived to arrive safely at his post early

in 1683 when he was expected, the company might have been

spared much expense and annoyance, and the colony a harrowing

experience. For Esmit was no more inclined to give up his

habits than Stapleton was to let him cultivate them in peace.

In April 1684 Sir William issued an order to Col. Thomas Hill,

authorizing him to secure any persons that he might find in the

Virgin Islands, especially Danes, and bring them to Nevis.™*

Before long Esmit’s secretary, Martin Borel, with three negroes

was captured and detained in arrest at Nevis. When Esmit

threatened to send the secretary’s seven children over into

Stapleton’s safekeeping in case their mother who was danger-

ously ill, should die,” the secretary was returned.



4 A. E., 1682-89 (Nov. 20, and Dec., 1683).



35 Ibid. (Jan. 26, 1684). They were Jochum Delicaet and Jan Borris.

* Cal. Col., 1681-85, 1947, III (April S, 1684).



31 Ibid., 1947, II (June 11, 1684); A. E. (June 16, 1684).



58 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



May 7, 1684, the king issued an order deposing Adolph Esmit

and naming Gabriel Milan as governor of St. Thomas in his

stead.



To take the new governor and his retinue over to the West

Indies, the king set aside the warship, Fortuna, armed with forty

guns and provided with a crew of eighty men, and placed in

command Captain George Meyer, a German-speaking officer

who had been in the Danish service for five years. Besides his

own family, consisting of a wife, a grown son, Felix, and four

children, Milan brought with him a governess, three maids,

three lackeys, a laborer, and a Tartar.“‘ As merchant at the

St. Thomas factory and next in authority to the governor, the

directors sent along Niels Lassen, and as “assistant” in the

company’s office (a clerical place) John Lorentz, a young man

from Flensborg in Schleswig who had contracted to serve the

company for four years.



Lavish provision was made for the governor’s comfort.

Various kinds of foreign wines were taken on board, and place

was even found for six or seven dogs. The king had furnished

him with 6,000 rdl. cash for his immediate needs and given him

part of his salary in advance. Certainly no charge of niggard-

liness could be laid against the Company, the entire original

stock of which amounted to not more than 44,866 rdl. (64,300

sidl.). Captain Meyer was entrusted with a secret order direct-

ing that in case of Milan’s death Niels Lassen should succeed

to the governorship, and that in case of the death of the latter,

Lieutenant Christopher Heins of St. Thomas should ‘take

charge.*© The Fortuna remained long enough to receive a copy

of Charles II’s orders to Stapleton to assist the new governor in

case Esmit should resist.“



The man who was charged with the responsibility of re-

deeming the good name of his country in the far-off Caribbean

had led an eventful life. Milan came of a reputable Jewish

family which had connections in Portugal, Flanders, and



® Christian V. to A. Esmit. A. E., 1688-89.

“4 Krarup, Milan, 5.



‘6 Tbid., 6.



“ Cal. Col., 1681-85, No. 1676 (May 18).



60 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



King’s selection of this fifty-three years old soldier of fortune for

service in the company might have been from motives of human-

ity, his choice could scarcely have been looked upon by hard-

headed business men with anything but misgivings.”



The Fortuna arrived at St. Thomas on October 18, 1684, after

a voyage of about nine weeks.“ At Nevis Milan called on Octo-

ber 6 to pay his respects to Governor Stapleton and to receive

the latter’s “instructions.” Sir William seems to have availed

himself of the opportunity to accompany Milan and to witness

Adolph Esmit’s final disgrace. Esmit handed over the reins of

office without delay or resistance. He also handed over a

treasury so empty that when the English were ready to depart,

after having been entertained for ten days, the money needed

for the purchase of parting gifts for the English dignitaries had

to be borrowed by the government from a planter. What was

worst of all, Esmit handed over to Milan an island that had

become an outlaw among its more reputable neighbors. This

was shown clearly enough two months before the latter’s ar-

rival, when, on May 22, a Spanish captain, Antonio Martino,

landed and carried fifty-six slaves off to Hispaniola or Haiti.

Lieutenant Heins had been sent over with two planters to de-

mand the return of the loot, but without success.”



That Esmit had been prepared for the present contingency

there could be no doubt. The gold, silver, and other property

that he was able to scrape together had been sent to the Dutch

island of St. Eustatius, whence they were to be shipped to

Flushing. Although Milan had been instructed only to secure

the persons of Esmit and his family and to have them sent to

Copenhagen, he took it upon himself to try to secure the latter’s

property as well, by sending Niels Lassen to Governor Hout-

coper of St. Eustatius with an alleged copy of his instructions and

a demand for the delivery of the goods. But neither this nor

subsequent attempts availed the crafty governor. Instead of



"In Personalhistorisk Tidskrift, 3 R.2 B. (Kjdbenhavn, 1893) 102 of sag.

F. Krarup has given an admirable and exhaustive account of Milan’s early life,

which has been followed in the preceding paragraphs.



* Ibid., 6.



* Ibid., 7.



62 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



governor promptly appointed his son, Felix.5? Instead of select-

ing permanent councilors from among the planters as he had

been instructed to do under certain specified conditions, he

put in now one, now another, until fourteen planters had taken

part in the government with him.™



With the other planters Milan was equally whimsical. For

trifling misdemeanors he instituted elaborate investigations and

meted out extravagant fines and punishments where a wiser

man would have overlooked the whole matter.** Offending

negroes were made to feel the pressure of the governor’s heavy

hand. A runaway who might have been mercifully beheaded

was impaled alive on a sharpened stick to die in horrible agony.©

Another negro, arrested on a similar charge, had his foot cut off,

after which he was confiscated to the governor’s use and put

to work in his kitchen.



When in the spring following the departure of the Fortuna

(on March $1, 1685), Milan got wind of what he at once sus-

pected to be a nefarious plot against his life, he vented his fury

upon the unfortunate persons with swift and fiendish vengeance.*

In the midst of charges and counter-charges, one fact stood out

with a clearness that was unmistakable. Milan’s stewardship of

- his own plantation property was above reproach; seventy

negroes remained on the plantation even after twenty-five had

been returned to an Englishman from whom they had been

forcibly seized.*” Here prosperity was rife.



In Copenhagen Captain Meyer’s arrival was naturally

awaited with a good deal of interest, even anxiety. The cap-

tain’s report when he arrived on June 10, 1685, without Adolph

Esmit, and even without a word from Milan, gave the directors

and shareholders food for thought. Although they had only the

captain’s unsupported word, the small cargo and Milan’s

silence could not but rouse their fears that something was



52 Krarup, Milan, 9.

8 Tbid., 10.



54 Tbid., 12, 23, 26, 36.

55 Toid., 22, 23.



% Ibid., 23-26.



© Tbid., 38.



64 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



one man, killing another, and forcing the valiant captain to

beat a hasty retreat to St. Thomas. It was withal an in-

glorious ending to a sorry enterprise, and not calculated to re-

deem the good name of the island.”



The commissioners had arrived in the harbor before the

news of the “reprisal” fiasco could reach the governor, and

before his “‘valet,”’ Moses Caille, could return from the French

islands, whence he had been sent by the desperate governor in

search of help.*! Sitting in his private room and surrounded by

all manner of firearms, the governor drew the parley out for

three days before he finally surrendered to the king’s repre-

sentative. Mikkelsen’s intimation that Milan’s attitude ren-

dered him liable to the charge of rebellion, combined with the

fact that the men on whom he could depend were rapidly dimin-

ishing in number, brought the governor to his knees. A guard

consisting of twelve men from the Fortuna and twelve planters,

all under the command of Christopher Heins, was placed at the

fort. With his removal to the ship the reign of Gabriel Milan

came to a sudden end. Adolph Esmit and his wife, Charity,

likewise the company’s merchant, Niels Lassen, who had been in

prison since April 30, were taken out of their dungeons and put

on board ship. The scene of interest, as far as the company is

concerned, was soon to shift to Copenhagen. Nicholas Esmit had

already lost his reason while in a Copenhagen prison waiting for

a chance to clear himself and to bring action against his brother.

The two successors of Nicholas were now to be given a chance to

defend their official actions in the Danish courts and before the

directors of the company.



Commissioner Mikkelsen was employed from March until

July with collecting evidence from the planters concerning

Milan’s conduct. A few extracts from a letter written by the

official reporter, Andrew Brock, to director Albert Gylden-

sparre on June 30, 1686, just before the Fortuna sailed, will give

an idea of the proceedings. “I wish for my part that your

Excellency could have been here a single day and heard what



® Krarup, Milan, 29.

* Caille’s mission appears to have borne no fruit beyond arousing the Span-

iards.



66 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



dawn on March 26, 1689, he was beheaded on the New Square

(Nytorv) in Copenhagen.



Adolph Esmit’s long imprisonment both on St. Thomas and

in Copenhagen in 1686 and 1687 had given him grounds for ap-

pearing as the injured party, and for demanding some form of

restitution. While the Milan trial was dragging slowly on, the

former governor and his wife seem to have been kept in prison

in Copenhagen. From their arrival on October 12, 1686, until

March, 1687, when Nicholas’ case against his brother was

finally ready for trial, they remained in confinement.“ Here, as

in the case of Milan, a commission was appointed,” and al-



though a number of petty irregularities and cases of tampering

with accounts were found, Adolph Esmit was on November 2,



1687, given a verdict of not guilty. On the same day, the di-

rectors of the company actually named him governor of St.

Thomas,® and a few days later a fleet of three ships, the Young

Tobias, the Red Cock (Den Réde Hane) and the Maria left

Copenhagen for the West Indies. Accompanying Adolph

Esmit, and in command of the fleet, was vice-admiral Iver

Hoppe who seems to have had secret orders to bring Esmit back

with him to Denmark in case he proved intractable. The latter

was evidently being given his last chance, but at best it is

difficult to see how the directors could have hoped that a spell of

confinement could make the leopard change his spots. A report

Commissioner Mikkelsen’s instructions, and may have used her good offices

here.



¢ Adolph’s “‘brothers-in-law” Steen Andersen Bille and Jurgen Jurgensen

gave bonds for his appearance. A. E., 1682-89 (March 25, 1687).



*7 Jens Juel, Mathias Moth, Muhle and Hiyer.



68 One condition was that he should invest 2,000 rdl. within one year after

he took possession at St. Thomas.



68 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



it indicated the king’s willingness to jeopardize the interests of

the colony by an impossible appointee for the chance of securing

precious metal from a galleon wrecked on a Spanish coast.

After his arrival on March 2, 1688, in the leading-strings of

vice-admiral Hoppe, it took Adolph Esmit just three months to

convince all concerned of his utter incapacity. On June 22, his

quarters were moved from the fort to the ship, where they re-

mained until he had finished his last voyage to Denmark. Be-

fore the Maria’s departure, the vice-admiral called the in-

habitants together (July 7) and told them that he wished to

know if Esmit’s statement that he held the affection of all on

the island was true. “If you want Adolph Esmit to become

governor, speak now while there is yet time,” the vice-admiral

said. To this the planters all responded as with one voice,

“No! if that should happen, we should all leave the land!”

When asked concerning vice-governor Heins, they replied that



they asked for no better governor.’? This time Charity’s pulling

of wires could not avail, but she pulled at them with her wonted

vigor to the last as the directors learned from an intercepted

letter to her husband.”* Thus ended nearly a decade of weary



7B. & D., 1688-89, Esmit’s diary (July 7, 1688). This was finished in

another hand, apparently Lorents’s.



73 See Appendiz E, p. $08. The case against Adolph Esmit was resumed by

the company on his return, but apparently without result, for the ship and

goods he had sent to Flushing in 1684 were confiscated before he could get hold

of them, so he had nothing to be seized. Early in 1689 he offered the Swedish

ambassador in Copenhagen his services in seizing the island of St. Thomas for

Sweden without loss of life. Nothing came of it, and on January 25, 1600, the

case against him was finally dropped, and he was allowed to go whither he would.

He seems to have left Denmark for Courland, after which all trace of him is lost.



70 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



vicinity of Crab Island. The company had begun before Heins’

time to go into the planting business, and managed to secure

eighty slaves from one of the Guinea cargoes brought to America

by Pauli, the secretary of the Company.”*



A most significant effort to start the island on the road toward

prosperity had been made in 1685, when the Elector of Bran-

denburg entered into a treaty with the King of Denmark, by

which a company organized under his protection and patronage

was to be permitted to establish a factory and a plantation at

St. Thomas under certain conditions. Occupation had been

begun in 1686, and hopes were entertained that the Branden-

burg occupation might help put new life into the poor, distracted

little colony. The accession of John Lorentz to the post of act-

ing governor in 1696 was the beginning of an official career of

notable efficiency which ended with the death of Lorentz in 1702.

Although not governor during the entire interval, he never re-

laxed his interest in the Company’s welfare. The connection of

John Lorentz with the Danish West India and Guinea Company

as its acting head brings to an end what may properly be called

its most critical period.



16 The contract was made October 26, 1686, and the slaves were delivered by

Captain Cordt (Cort) May 14, 1687. C. H. (May 26, 1687.)



vid THE DANISH WEST INDIES



about the sanction [of France] to lands,” and be willing to make

considerable sacrifices by way of reciprocal trade privileges.

The French, however, did not consider Brandenburg trade of

sufficient importance to be worth the trouble of a treaty.”



The first proposal to establish a Brandenburg African com-

pany appears to have been made by Benjamin Raule in Decem-

ber, 1679. It was to this Dutchman, more than to any other

one man, that the interest of Brandenburg in Guinea and the

West Indies during the last two decades of the seventeenth

century is due. Raule was born at Flushing (Vlissingen) in

Zeeland, and had become, before the outbreak of war with

France, a shipowner on a large scale (Grossreeder), and a coun-

cilor in the nearby town of Middelburg. In the naval war of

1672 he was practically ruined, and in the war that followed

Sweden’s invasion of the Mark of Brandenburg he sought to re-

coup his fortunes by serving the Elector as a privateer. On the

conclusion of peace the Elector made him director-in-chief for

naval affairs, and in 1681 he became director-general of marine

with the rank of colonel. A man of restless activity and bold

imagination, he was brimful of schemes for promoting the

commerce of Brandenburg-Prussia. At one time it was an East

India Company, at another an Iceland company, and now it was

a company for trading with the Guinea and Angola coasts in

“wax, gold, ivory, grain, blacks, and whatever the coast pro-

duces.” * In June, 1677, before the French had concluded their

treaty with the Dutch, he had offered to lead a privateering

expedition against the French and another against Spain, the

latter for the purpose of securing the equivalent in ships for the

subsidies promised by Spain to Brandenburg in a treaty made

in 1674. That, he argued, would cause not only the Spaniards,

but the entire world to open their eyes in astonishment at the

Elector’s sea power, and would lead French, Swedes, and Dutch

to try to make commercial treaties with him.‘



* Schtick, I, 185, 186. Raule had proposed engaging in the Guinea trade

and having the Elector participate with him when he was first called to Berlin

in 1676. Ibid., 187.



® Ibid., II, 89-94.



4 Tbid., I, 98, 99, 112.



14 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



ment in December, 1682, of the first Brandenburg factory, just

east of the Dutch station at El Mina, near the former Branden-

burg landing place; they named their station “Den Grossen

Friedrichsberg.” °



In February, 1684, they occupied Accada, just to the east of

their first factory, and in January, 1685, a place called Tacca-

rary. They lost the latter to the Dutch, the leading traders on

this part of the coast, in 1687, and in its place the Brandenbur-

gers took up a station at Tacrama (or Tacerma), not far from

Cape Three Points, which they named Fort Sophie Louise.



In planning to secure a West Indian factory where they could

dispose of the human part of their Guinea cargoes, the Branden-

burgers were following the lead of the English, Dutch, French,

Swedes, Danes, and Courlanders. Despite threats and acts of

violence by the Dutch West India Company against the Bran-

denburg factors Raule proceeded with his Guinea plans, which

he promoted with the help of disaffected shareholders of the

Dutch company. Some extracts from Raule’s letters to the

Elector will show what was transpiring. ‘“‘John Pedy writes me

from Rotterdam,” he remarks in 168] (August 16?) “that the

Messrs. Coymans and Van Belle from Holland, who are two of

the leading contractors with the Dutch West India Company

and deliver to it six thousand slaves annually, have informed

him on the quiet that they would be glad to consider entering

into a contract with me instead of with the company, provided

it would be possible to arrange matters with the Danish crown,

so that either we could buy their place St. Thomas or secure full

and free permission to bring slaves to the island.” Pedy’s

suggestion prompted Raule to propose bringing the matter

before the Danish court. ‘Pedy and I and our company would

be able, I believe,’ Raule wrote, “with the help of the said Van

Belle and Coymans to bring together 40,000 florins, of which we

would present half to the Danes on condition that half of the

returns [from the capital invested] should go to Copenhagen

{apparently in return for the use of St. Thomas], and the other

half to Koénigsberg. I believe that if it were properly inau-



® Schiick, I, 314 et seg. This factory is referred to by Lucas (ii, 68) and others

as Fredericksburg.



16 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



condition of paying to the Danish company two slaves out of

each hundred brought in.



In 1685, when Raule betook himself to Copenhagen with

instructions from the Elector, negotiations moved rapidly for-

ward. He was to try to purchase or lease St. Thomas, or at

least make it accessible to Brandenburg ships, because, as his

instructions said, without the slave trade to America the

African company cannot make any headway (nicht emergiren

kann). Jens Juel, the chief director of the Danish com-

pany, opposed the Brandenburg plan from the first,!® s0 Raule

had to work through such other nen of influence as chancellor

(Storkansler) Frederick Ahlefeldt, Count Ulrik Frederick Gyl-

denlive, councilors Conrad Bierman and Conrad Reventlow."*

In an audience granted on October 13, 1685, Raule learned that

the king favored a union of the two companies.” Shortly

thereafter, Raule and Gyldensparre, a director with Juel in

the Danish company, conferred at Hadersleben in Schleswig,

and prepared a scheme of union ® based upon the king’s ex-

pressed desire. It was proposed that the Danes should retain

their stations in Guinea (Cape Coast) and the West Indies

(Christiansfort on St. Thomas), and the Brandenburgers like-

wise their Guinea stations of Great Fredericksburg (Gross-

Friedrichsberg) and Accada; that both groups should share the

garrisoning of these stations on equal terms. Cape Coast was

to be the African headquarters. A governor-general elected by

both companies in common was to reside in Copenhagen, and

he was to have the supreme command over the garrisons in

those places; an officer known as “chief in commercial matters”

was to be selected by the Elector; Calvinists and Lutherans

were to have free erercitium religionis on St. Thomas, and

Catholics and Jews were to be tolerated and allowed to hold

private services, provided they permitted no scandala. Two



14 Schtick, I, 198. His instructions were dated September 25, 1685.



18 Jbid., I, 194, note 185.



6 Jbid., I, 194, note 188. Bierman was created Count von Ehrenschild in

1681.



" Ibid., I, 194.



18 Tbid., 194, 195.



8 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



vexatious troubles that shortly arose between the representa-

tives of the two companies.”



On all products exported from St. Thomas, the Brandenburg

African Company was to pay the Danish company five per

cent. in kind (in natura); * on slaves imported, one per cent., on

those sold or shipped out of the land, two per cent.” The con-

tract provided further that all goods coming in or going out

were to be subject to a weighing fee of one pound of sugar or its

equivalent for each one hundred pounds.” Provision was made

for the settlement of disputes in which subjects of both states

were involved.” To the Danes the greatest promise held out by

the treaty was contained in the paragraphs dealing with the

plantation which they expected the Brandenburgers to estab-

lish, and which, with poll taxes, weighing fees, export and im-

port dues, was calculated to yield a moderate return upon the

Danish company’s capital stock. To the Germans, the Guinea

trade was the main consideration; they seem from the first not

to have looked upon the plantation idea as anything obligatory

for them.”



Raule’s dream that an investment of 150,000 Thaler should

be able to yield a million in two or three years *! was going to be

rudely shattered when the application of the treaty was to put

to the test his diplomatic ability; and the stubborn obstacle that

blocked the way to friendly intercourse was to be the provision

which demanded or did not demand the establishment of a

plantation, according to the reader’s predilections. What the

treaty really did was to raise up on St. Thomas a rival to the

Danish company which still might deal in slaves if it desired,

and which already owned and managed a couple of good-sized

plantations. So long as the respective fields of the two com-

panies were not strictly limited by agreement, there would be



2 For the Company’s viewpoint see the directors’ instructions to A. Esmit,

November 9, 1687. A. E., 1688-89.



% Schtick, II, 259 ({ 7).



= [bid., II, 260 ({ 8).



38 Tbid., II, 260 ({ 10).



%9 Tbid., I, 261 (J 15, | 16, | 17).



» Thid., I, 281.



*! Thid., I, 195.



80 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



gave them a very definite idea of what their neighbors in St.

Thomas were doing. The Brandenburgers seem never to have

entertained seriously the idea of actually establishing a bona

fide plantation. Neither Laporte nor Moses Caille, who acted

as deputy director on Laporte’s visit to Berlin in 1688, were

willing to admit the soundness of the Danish interpretation.

On the pretext that they must await instructions from home

before taking up plantation ground, they kept the Danish

officials in suspense until their impatience was turned into a

suspicion that the Brandenburgers were looking for a chance to

seize the entire island. The vigor with which the Brandenburg

authorities pushed their business in procuring slaves and dis-

posing of them on St. Thomas and the surrounding islands (as

St. Eustatius) aroused the fears of the Danes who were receiving

next to no assistance from the Company. The fact that the

planters became indebted to the Brandenburg company led the

Danes to fear that in case of trouble the planters might side

with the foreign company.”



The persistent annoyances to which the Brandenburgers were

subjected led them to attempt the occupation or purchase of

neighboring islands. They tried to secure Crab Island, but the

Danes laid vigorous claim to it, and the Spaniards sent ships

around at intervals to drive off such settlers as they might find

there.” The Brandenburgers finally did take possession of St.

Peter, an appropriately named rocky islet just northwest of

St. John, but it was ill adapted to their purposes.’ Except for

the refusal of the English to give up their claims to the island,

they might have secured Tobago, near Trinidad, from the

Duke of Courland. The negotiations were begun early in 1687,

but the duke’s rather shady title and the opposition of the

Dutch made it impracticable to push the matter to a conclusion

at that time.®



The death of vice-governor Heins in October, 1689, and the

election of John Lorentz to take his place, did not improve the



+9 Heins to Directors, (September 2, 1687). C. H., 1685-89 (?)

 Schiick, I, 238.



“! Heins to Directors (August 20, 1689). B. & D., 1683-89.

 Schtick, I, 207.



82 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



“castle” on the Guinea coast, and to carry on the slave trade

with the West Indies, on the payment to the Company of a

two per cent. duty.” This was followed on February 18, 1600,

by a contract with a reputable and venturesome Bergen mer-

chant, Councilor of Commerce (Commerce-Raad) George

Thorméhlen of Méhlenpriis, who leased St. Thomas from the

Company for a period of ten years. He was to pay 4,680 sidl.

each year, which was just four per cent. of the 115,750 aldl.

capital entered on the books of the Company.* By these two

contracts the management of both the Guinea and West India

ends of the Company’s business went into the hands of private

proprietors. The result of this experiment will be discussed in

a later chapter.



Before the news of these changes could be received at St.

Thomas, and before Lorentz had received a request from Thor-

méhlen to remain at his post until further orders, the vice-

governor was preparing to bring the matter of the contested

land rental to a definite settlement in the Company’s favor, if

necessary, by force. He was proceeding according to secret

instructions from the directors in Copenhagen.” The rental

which was calculated upon the current price of tobacco was

estimated at 20,000 rdi. annually, that is, more than six times

the rental fixed in the Thorméhlen contract.” If strictly en-

forced it would spell ruin, which was apparently precisely what

was intended.



The efforts of Danish statesmen were at this time applied

toward keeping Denmark from becoming involved in the

European war. A defensive alliance between Denmark and

Sweden was negotiated February, 1690, and a treaty of com-

merce and navigation for the mutual protection of their trade



© Vest. Reg., 1670-99 (July 27, 1689). The slave trade had been carried on in

the few years immediately preceding by ships sailing from Gitickstadt. A Por-

tuguese (?) Jew, Moses Joshua Henriques, was appointed factor in Gltickstadt

for ships sailing to Guinea on April 27, 1686. Arff's ships were to sail from

Copenhagen. Rothe, Rescripter, II.



“ C. B., 1690-1718. Thormdhlen himself wrote his name Thor Mohlex.



© Lorents’s Journ. (November 24, 1690); directors to Lorents (December $2,

1691); C. B., 1690-1718.



© Ibid. (December 5, 1691).

THE BRANDENBURGERS AT ST. THOMAS 88



was concluded in the following year.®' In the same year (1691)

Denmark made a secret treaty with France in which she agreed

to maintain neutrality during the war.®? Because of Denmark’s

suspected leaning toward France early in the war Raule had

counseled the new Elector, Frederick III, who had succeeded

his father at the latter’s death in 1688, to make reprisals upon

Danish commerce through Zeeland privateers, a proposal which

it was found impracticable to carry out."* With these and other

European complications threatening, the Brandenburg African

Company could scarcely be expected to show a flourishing

state of prosperity. Between their Dutch neighbors on the

Guinea coast and jealous Danish officials at St. Thomas the

prospects were far from alluring. In a report sent out from

Emden on August 22, 1690, by the two Brandenburg ad-

miralty colleges and Raule,®‘ three causes were mentioned as

having impeded the prosperity of the Company, namely: the

persecutions of the Dutch West India Company, the

scant sums of money flowing into the marine department

treasury, and the difficulties caused by their Danish hosts at

St. Thomas.“



On St. Thomas, an atmosphere of suspicion pervaded every-

thing. On the last day of October Lorentz declined an invita-

tion to a banquet given by director-general Laporte, for he felt

that it was to be merely a meeting of Laporte’s adherents among

the planters,—his “creatures.” Among those suspected of dis-

loyalty to the Danish company were two members of the gov-



5 D. R. H., TV, 660, 661. This treaty (with additions made in March, 1608)

is notable as being the first instance of an armed neutrality for the protection

of neutral commerce.



53 Ibid.



5 Schtick, I, 280.



4 Raule was discredited for a time following the Great Elector’s death, but

by 1690 he had regained some of his former influence. The troubled career of

Raule and the internal strife that marked the government of the Brandenburg

company fall outside of the scope of the present study.



5 The seizure by the Dutch of the two Guinea factories of Accada and Tac-

carary was the subject of negotiations from 1690 to 1694, when the arbitrating

board awarded the Brandenburg company a substantial sum in damages.

Schick, I, 218 ef seq.



™ Ibid., I, 231.

84 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



ernor’s council, Captain Delicaet *’ and Lawrence Westerbaen,

the latter a refugee from St. Eustatius. Every remark of these

men that might possibly be unfavorably construed was carefully

noted by Lorentz in his diary. At a meeting of the council

called by the governor with a view to ascertaining how these

men stood, Captain Delicaet was quoted as having declared:

“It is a difficult matter, for we have to do, not with common

people, but with lords and princes.” The governor informed

him significantly that he would know well enough what was

proper to do when the time for the payment approached.

Among the planters the governor worked cautiously, drawing

the loyal ones among them still more closely to his side. He

was fully determined to be prepared “in case any should be

inclined to rebellion.” ®



The time limit for the payment of the tax according to Lor-

entz’s calculations was November 238; so on the 24th the latter

called the council together again and had an itemized bill

prepared for 20,000 rdl. 4614 styvers. This bill together

with a letter was taken by the two professedly loyal coun-

cilors ® to Laporte on November 25. Two days later the

director-general came before the council to read his reply in

which he stated his reasons for refusing payment. The main

argument advanced was that he had no orders from his chiefs to

make any such payment.” After Laporte’s departure the coun-

cil decided, in view of the expected arrival on any day of three

Brandenburg ships,*! to institute judicial condemnatory pro-

ceedings after three days’ elapse. Finally, on December 2

(O. S.), 1690, came the day of reckoning, when the vice-governor

and his council marched over to the Brandenburg warehouse,



57 Captain Delicaet, scenting trouble, had left on the day of the banquet. “ Als

hat er sich Reversiren mussen innerhalb 14 Tage wiederumb cinsustellen; Weile

es seine Gewohnheit war, wann etwas wichtiges solte vorgenomen werden da er sich

in mitlerweile an scite hielte.”” Lorentz’s Journal (October 18, 1690).



5 Ibid. (November 14 and 17, 1690).



® Thomas Berentsen and the secretary Joachim von Holten. Ibid. (Novem-

ber 25, 1690).



© Toid. (November 27, 1690).



*1 Raule had sent $ ships (Churprincess, Salamander, and Drache) to Guinea,

and 2 (Churprinz and Fuchs) to St. Thomas. Schiick, I, 231 (note 53).

THE BRANDENBURGERS AT ST. THOMAS 85



with the Company’s smith to break the lock, and a committee

of inhabitants, mainly planters, to appraise the condemned

goods.*? On Laporte’s refusal to accede to the council’s formal

demand to open the magazine and after vigorous protests and

appeals by the Brandenburgers the doors were forcibly opened

and the appraisal begun. Lorentz carefully notes in his journal

Laporte’s remark to Delicaet and Berentsen that “if they (the

Brandenburgers) were as strong in the land as we (the Danes)

we should not have done what we did.” He quotes this as an

evidence of their “good(!) intentions” and of “what they had

up their sleeves.” ** By Christmas Eve, two of the Brandenburg

warehouses had practically been emptied of all their sugar and

cotton.“ The value was estimated by the director-general at

24,652 pieces-of-eight, remarkable precision, considering that

he had refused to send a representative to participate in the

weighing.“



The seizure was not carried out without a certain danger to

the colony. Meetings were held on the quiet at the houses of

various planters, and were attended by the Brandenburg offi-

cials. At some of these gatherings anti-Company indignation

found vent. Thomas Berentsen, one of Lorentz’s most trusted

councilors, who tried to investigate one of these meetings, found

Laporte and all the Brandenburg employees there as well as an

English captain from St. Kitts, one “‘Callehan” and several

planters. Laporte himself forced Berentsen out through the

door, uttered sundry threats against the Danes and accused

him of being one of the demons of the Brandenburgers.*™ The

proposal to seize the Brandenburg houses and slaves was con-

sidered by the vice-governor and council, but was finally dropped

as inexpedient.”



Three Brandenburg ships, the frigates Electoral Prince and

Salamander, and a snow arrived in St. Thomas harbor on



* Francis (Frans) Martens, Lucas Volckers, Adrian (Ariaen) Sorgeloos, and

Jacob Elias. Lorents’s Journal (December 2, 1690).



63 Ibid.



4 Ibid. (December 24, 1690).



‘8 Ibid. (December 2/12, and December 8/18, 1690); Schuck, I, 282.



 Lorents’s Journal (December 19, 1690).



* Ibid. (December 80, 1690).

86 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



March 7, having on board about four hundred men, and pro-

vided with a commission to seize French ships.“ The arrival of

the three vessels set numerous rumors afloat concerning their

intentions; but their passports had been issued on August 18

preceding, over three months before the seizure of the sugar and

cotton, hence any action they might have taken would have

been entirely upon the authority of the captains and the St.

Thomas officials of their company. As it was, Laporte confined

himself to repeating his request for restitution of the confiscated

goods and to making an offer of forty marines to supplement the

weak garrison at the fort, both of which overtures were firmly

but politely declined by Lorentz. The latter even sent in a

further claim of his own for the balance of the rental, his esti-

mate falling considerably short of that of the director-general.”

The vessels left in a little over a month with only a part of the

expected cargoes.’?



Meanwhile a Brandenburg bark had left St. Thomas on

January 8 to carry the news of the Danish company’s violence

to Emden and Berlin.”! With that the scene of interest shifts

from St. Thomas to Copenhagen, whither by June the Branden-

burg envoy Falaiseau had betaken himself to demand on behalf

of his master the recall of Lorentz and the punishment of the

guilty parties.”? Christian V hastened to send a letter to Lorentz

(June 20) asking for an explanation and for the necessary docu-

ments. When in September the news came that Lorentz had

seized the Electoral Princess and her cargo of slaves new force

was added to the former complaint, and to persons outside of

official circles it began to look as if the Esmit-Milan drama was

to be acted over again in a revised version with Laporte in

Stapleton’s réle.



The distance and the slowness of communication between the

home government and the West Indian factories were bound to



 Lorents’s Journal (March 7, 1691); Cal. Col., 1689-92, No. 1882 (April 8,

1691). A snow is a two-masted, square rigged vessel.



© Ibid. (March 10 and 17, 1691); Hist (p. $4) says sixty.



0 Ibid. (April 10, 1691). Cf. Schick (I, 232), who asserts that they had to

return empty.



11 Ibid. (January 8, 1691).



78 Schiick, I, 232.



88 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



defiantly waving above them.” John Lorentz, who continued in

office ad interim until the proprietor Thorméhlen could provide a

governor, had sent a captain with some men to Crab Island a

few days before the Brandenburg bark made its landing.

Though Laporte spread rumors threatening forcible seizure of

the island, no further serious efforts were made in that direc-

tion.” The Tobago negotiations were renewed and a treaty

made with Duke Frederick Casimir who had only recently mar-

ried the Elector Frederick’s sister, Elizabeth Sophie; but Eng-

land still refused to give up her claims to the island.” St.

Eustatius likewise came in for attempts. The French had

captured it from the Dutch in 1689, but had been forced in 1690

to surrender it to the English,” who in turn delivered it up to the

Dutch in 1692." The English were naturally unwilling to give

up an island originally belonging to an ally; *! and of course the

Dutch had no desire to surrender their most valuable slave

trading factory in the Leeward Islands.



This series of untoward experiences had had depressing ef-

fects upon the financial state of the Brandenburg company.

At the close of 1691 it was practically bankrupt, so the Elector

Frederick decided in the beginning of the following year to re-

organize it on the plan of the Dutch East and West India

Companies.*? This was the aim in the octroi of February 27,"

and in the “new octroi”’ granted on September 14/24, 1692. The

latter gave the “Brandenburg-African-American Company”

the right not only to conclude alliances, but to wage defensive

warfare, to make peace, and to privateer against the ships of the

Elector’s enemies on a payment of ten per cent. of the prize

money into his treasury.** In a report on the state of the com-



78 Schiick, I, 288. Dannebrog is the popular designation for the flag of Denmark.



77 Lorentz to directors (June 6, 1698). C. B., 1690-1718.



78 Schuck, I, 234.



7 Cal. Col., 1689-92, Nos. 65 (April 8, 1689), 1004 (August 3, 1690).



% Ibid., No. 2010 (January 14, 1692).



*! Schick, I, 235. Cf. “Neues Oktroi . . .” of September 14/24, 1692 (4),

in Schuck, II, 417.



52 Tbid., I, 236 et seq., II, 385 et seg. (No. 135a), 398 et seg. (No. 135b).



83 Ibid., TI, 385 et seq.



84 Tbid., IT, 416 ef seq.



90 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



Governor Delavigne for failure to keep proper watch. They

contented themselves for the time, however, with sending out

requests through Delavigne’s successor, Lorentz, to the neigh-

boring French governments, asking them to detain the pirate,

should he land, and to compel him to give “satisfaction” for



The negotiations at Copenhagen for the renewal of the three-

year lease took place early in 1695 while the Elector was at-

tempting to obtain full title to Tortola. Falaiseau succeeded in

securing an extension of a single year, for which the Branden-

burg company had to agree to pay 4,000 rdl. instead of 3,000,

and to furnish surety for the unpaid 9,000. Meantime the two

contracting parties were to attempt to come to an agreement on

the interpretation, among other things, of the paragraph in the

1685 treaty which dealt with the cultivation of the plantation on

St. Thomas. The Danish company reserved the right to take

up the trade itself, as well as to permit such others to trade in

St. Thomas as might desire to do so.”



In November, 1695, the stubborn question was taken up

afresh. To assist Falaiseau at Copenhagen the Elector had de-

puted Laporte who had been ordered to Berlin from St. Thomas

and had been made a councilor of marine.** The Danish com-

missioners were Baron Jens Juel who had been director of the

Company since 1682, and Mathias Moth, secretary in the for-

eign office and also director of the Company. These were the

men who had counseled Lorentz’s violent action and had sent

him back as governor on the breakdown of the Thormdhlen pro-

prietorship in 1694, in the face of the fact that the Elector had

but two years before insisted on his recall and punishment.

Their conviction that the Brandenburg treaty was a mistake

had no doubt been much strengthened by their conferences with

Lorentz in Copenhagen in 16983 and 1694. Falaiseau in his

d Amérique (a la Haye, 1724), Vol. II, p. 91, and ascribed to the year 1688.

Labat’s garbled story has reappeared in many versions, especially in guide books

and works of travel.



9? Resolution by Christian V (April 9, 1695), C. B., 1690-1713; Schtick, I, 244,

245.

*3 Laporte’s place as factor at St. Thomas was taken by Peter (Pedro) Van

Belle whom Labat (op. cit., II, 286) refers to as ““M. Vambel.”



92 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



to dispose of the African company’s interests in 1718, as the

War of the Spanish Succession was nearing its close.* On the

return to Emden of the St. Thomas factor, Sivert Hoess, in

1714, the rumor was started that he brought with him over

200,000 florins in cash which he had amassed at the Company’s

expense. He declared under oath that he brought with him

only 9,800 thaler, his savings during twenty-one years of

service. Finally in 1721 the suit against him was settled by the

payment of 800 ducats.” In 1715, when the thirty-year privilege

at St. Thomas had about expired, the assets of the Branden-

burgers on the island were estimated at 28,848 pesos, which in-

cluded houses, negroes, goods, and claims.” Even these slender

resources it proved impossible to rescue, for the Danish claims

against the Brandenburgers for rental and other dues amounted

by this time to the stately sum of 1,078,229 pieces-of-eight. The

Prussian estimate was 90,000 thaler, while the Prussian counter-

claim for accumulated damages was only 264,959 thaler.™' In

1717 the Dutch West India Company contracted with Branden-

burg for the purchase of Gross-Friedrichsberg for 6,000 ducats,

and in 1724 Emden was lost from Brandenburg control for a

generation to come. Some fruitless negotiations with the

Danish court in 1716-1718 brought this strange episode to an

inglorious close.!?



To fix the responsibility for this diplomatic coup of the Danish

West India and Guinea Company is not difficult. It lay with

two directors who had the zealous codperation of the governor

of the colony, and the work was practically completed before

1700. Jens Juel had lived long enough to see the beginning of

the Brandenburg decline in the West Indies, and Mathias Moth

had witnessed the fulfilment of one of his most cherished ambi-

tions in the abandonment by the Brandenburgers of their West

Indian factory. The Brandenburg venture at St. Thomas had



%8 Schtick, I, 288, passim.



© Ibid., I, 295. A ducat was equal to 5/6 pesos.



100 Tbid., I, $01.



101 Jbid., I, $02.



2 Ibid., I, $02 (note 66); H. A. Perry, “ The Traditions of German Coloniza-

tion” in Macmillan’s Magazine, vol. 62, p. 118.



94 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



profound admirer of the Great Elector, makes the study of the

policy of his distinguished ancestor a subject worthy of sober

consideration. The dreams of Benjamin Raule and the Great

Elector Frederick William I, have come to a belated and partial

fulfilment in the days of Bismarck and of Emperor William II.

CHAPTER IV

THE LEASING OF GUINEA AND 8ST. THOMAS



“Tue shareholders of the West India Company on St. Thomas

have not had the slightest returns from the capital invested

since the Company’s establishment because of the many changes

of governors and their wretched administration; so they have

now resolved to lease the island of St. Thomas to a merchant

from Bergen named Termélen [Thorméhlen], for 4,000 rdl. each

year. He is to support the garrison, which is very small and

of but little account... . The arrangement is to begin this

coming June.”



In these words did the Swedish ambassador in Copenhagen,

Leyenclo, report the low state of the company and the change

to the proprietorship of Thormdhlen in a letter dated March 14,

1690.' In the year preceding, the company’s factory in Guinea

had been leased to Nicholas Jansen Arff for a period of eight

years.” In describing that series of events which ended in the

company’s reassuming control of St. Thomas in 1694 and of the

Guinea station in 1698, some repetition will be risked for the

sake of clarity.*



Arff was not able actually to take over the Guinea trade until

1690, when on July 22 he sent three ships ‘ out of the Sound

under Captain George Meyer. After over five months of sailing

and the loss of twenty-two men from scurvy, Captain Meyer

arrived at Christiansborg on December 31, 1690. The forts were

repaired with building materials brought from Denmark, and



1 Leyenclo to Charles XI. . Danske Samlinger, 2 R. V. 814.



® Arff’s grant was dated July 27, 1689, and appears to have given him the

Guines trade for life, but apparently he was limited by some supplementary

understanding to the eight-year term. Vest. Reg., 1671-99 (July 27, 1689).



3 The paragraph on the Arff venture is based entirely on Hartwig Meyer's

account, incorporated into Mariager MS., pp. 82 et seq.



“These were Kidbenhaons Nye Waaben (Copenhagen’s New Coat-of-arms),

Gyldenlives Weaben, and the galliot Lourwigen. Mariager MS., 82.



[95]

96 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



in March, 1691, the ships returned to Copenhagen, leaving Meyer

there as governor. The next ship arrived in July, 1692, took on

as much of gold and other Guinea products as it could secure,

and left for Denmark in September. Why none of these ships

took on slave cargoes for the West Indian market does not ap-

pear, for the slave trade was the lessee’s avowed aim. During

the governorship of Harding Petersen who succeeded Meyer in

1698, the fort at Christiansborg was seized by natives of the

Quambu tribe and the inmates were either maltreated or

killed.5 The governor, to whose negligence the capture was

ascribed by the company, managed after fearful hardships to es-

cape to the neighboring Dutch fort. This fort, the loss of which

would have cost Arff the sum of 71,315 rdl.,° was “bought”

back from the Quambu chief for 3,000 rdl. worth of goods in the

following year by the merchants Hartwig Meyer, stationed at

Christiansborg, and John Trane, factor on board one of the

ships.’ Shortly afterward, during the governorship of Thomas

Jacobson, a pirate from Prince’s Island * attacked the castle and

captured and killed many of its defenders including Harding

Petersen, the former Danish governor. During the two years

just preceding the expiration of Arff’s contract (1696 and 1697)

only two of his ships visited the coast, and these went mainly

for the purpose of bringing his effects at the fort to Europe

before he gave back the factory to the company. As a factor

in the West Indian slave trade the Arff venture appears to have

been negligible. It is probable that a few slaves were sold to

foreign companies or to interloping traders.°



5 Mariager MS., p. 84.



* By the loss of the fort, Fensman, according to the account books, lost 4,000

rdl. (in goods?) and 4,164 rdl. in gold.



7 Two ships sent out from Gitickstadt, the Christiansborg and the Gyldeniives

Waaben, had arrived in December, 1698, and anchored at the Dutch fort during

the negotiations. Mariager MS., 85.



* A tiny island near the Portuguese island of St. Thomas in the Guinea gulf.



* On August 2, 1695, Moses Joshua Henriques, a Jew from Gitickstadt, who

had petitioned the king for permission to trade with the West Indies and Guinea,

asked to have his rights transferred to one Jacob Cohen and his fellow investors.

The directors to whom the petition was referred advised against a project that

would necessitate outside capital. At the same time they advised the revoking



98 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



year.” It was not, however, until the wealthy Bergen mer-

chant George Thormohlen began to negotiate with the Com-

pany, that the proposal to lease St. Thomas was seriously

considered.



George Thorméhlen was a man whose enterprise and business

genius gave him a distinguished name in commercial circles in

the north. Although apparently less sound in his ideas accord-

ing to present standards, he bears comparison in enterprise and

boldness of conception with his distinguished Scotch contem-

porary, William Paterson. About the time that the Scotchman

was bringing about the establishment of the Bank of England,

the Scandinavian was seeking permission to found a paper

money bank in Norway. Failing in this project at first, he

brought the idea up again early in the reign of Frederick IV, but

in a modified form, providing for a considerable redemption

fund in gold. As it was impossible to raise the required sum the

scheme finally fell through.!" Thormdéhlen seems to have been

of North German origin, but had lived since 1670 in Bergen,

where he had promoted an astonishing variety of manufacturing

and commercial ventures including works and factories for the

production of salt, soap, woolen products, sailcloth, spikes,

copper goods, and gunpowder. He was a prime mover in the

establishment of the Bergen Stock Exchange in 1684. At the

time that he embarked on the West Indian enterprise he was a

vigorous man of about fifty, with a score of active and eventful

years before him.!?



The contract entered into between Thorméhlen and the



© Mikkel Mikkelsen to Company (December 8, 1686). Cf. Krarup, Mian

(ID, 288 B. & D., 168$-89(?).



11 In 1695 (April 24), Thormthlen presented to “the commission which met

in the palace council chamber” (Kommissionen i Raadstuen for Slotie) his

proposals for establishing a paper money bank in the district of Nordenfield in

Norway and submitted to a searching cross-examination. On December 6, 1697,

U. F. Gyldenldve, Stadtholder in Norway, expressed himself as entirely opposed

to the paper money idea. Protocol over Kommissionen i Raadstuen for Slotie,

2 B (April 24, 1695); ibid., 4 B. (December 6, 1697); ibid. (December 9, 1699);

E. Holm, Danmark-Norges Indre Hist., II, 408.



12 For a brief biographical sketch, see C. F. Bricka, Dansk Biographisk Lezi-

kon, v. 17, p. 278.



100 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



the support of the directors-who declared that any increase in

taxation was contrary to the agreement and would tend to drive

the planters off the island.”



It was becoming painfully evident that the demands of the

West Indian situation had grown beyond the proprietor’s

ability to meet them. To Thorméhlen’s request for a hundred

officers and men at a total cost in wages of 5,110 rdl. the directors

replied that they did not care how many were sent over, pro-

vided he paid the bills. To his plea that “‘the greatest part of the

resources belonging to me and my modest house are sunk in that

lease”? the directors Juel and Moth turned an unsympathetic

ear.” Their interest was now directed towards the prospects of

being able to satisfy the shareholders with the proceeds expected

from the lessee-ship.



Among the passengers on one of the three ships sent out by

Thorméhlen in the summer of 1692 was the latter’s new ap-

pointee to this governorship, Francis Delavigne, who arrived on

September 17. Lorentz had no taste for continuing in the

service under the new management and handed over the reins

of power to Delavigne with a light heart.’ He described his

successor as ‘‘a person by the name of Franz de la Wigne who is

reported to have been born in Copenhagen, and whose stepfather

is said to be the queen’s master in languages, namely Visconti.”

Again an untrained hand was chosen to direct the affairs of this

distant colony in a difficult time. Whether Delavigne’s zeal for

his master could make up for his lack of experience will presently

appear. One of the first duties that fell upon his shoulders was

the painful one of returning to the Brandenburgers the 16,000

rdl. worth of sugar which Lorentz had seized during the previous

year and which was already on board ship ready to be taken



16 Thorméhlen to government and people of St. Thomas (September 1, 1691),

P. B. O., 1683-1728; Directors to Lorents (December 22, 1691), Directors’ reso-

lution (November 12, 1692), C. B., 1690-17138.



17 Thormihlen to Directors (November 28, 1691); Directors to Thormthlen

(December 5, 1691); Thormthlen’s reply (December 5, 1691), C. B., 1690-1718.



48 Lorents to Directors (September 17, 1692), thid. The names of the ships

were the St, Thomas, Madame Thormdhlen, and Jageren (the Huntsman).



19 Delavigne papers (November 25, 1692).



» Lorents to Directors (January 6, 1693), C. B., 1690-1718.

THE LEASING OF GUINEA AND ST. THOMAS 101



home.*! The governor’s chagrin must have been still deeper

when he received a copy of the king’s order of September 8, 1692,

directing Thorméhlen to pay 8,000 of the 16,000 rd/.—in case he

had not delivered the contested goods to the Brandenburgers al-

ready—to Vice-admiral Iver Hoppe. This was by way of resti-

tution for a seizure made by the Brandenburg commissioners at

Emden in 1689,??—a characteristic seventeenth century mode of

“ settling” an international dispute. But the king’s previous

order of June 7, 1692,”* had already been received and executed.



Delavigne made a poor start when he tried to carry out

Thormdhlen’s schemes for raising the taxes. His attempts

to curry favor with the Brandenburg director-general imme-

diately after his arrival made him an object of suspicion

to John Lorentz, who was watching his every move with an

eagle eye and reporting his observations to Juel and Moth in

Copenhagen. Lorentz was a man worth reckoning with, for he

retained a strong hold upon many of the planters and hold-over

officials (like the factor, von Holten and assistant, Peter Chris-

tensen), and he could no doubt have been of real assistance as

an adviser on matters of inter-island trade. Before Lorentz had

returned from Copenhagen in the autumn of 1694 to replace

Delavigne, the latter had imprisoned and put von Holten in

irons, charging him, and apparently on good grounds, with

misappropriating funds and juggling accounts.”‘ Likewise the

assistant Peter Christensen, as a result of the irresponsible talk

of a negress,—‘“‘a loose heathenish female,’’—had been chained

to a block in a cell at the fort, and his entire estate condemned

“without any judgment, summons or warning.” One Engel

Huysen had been kept for months “in a dark room, without

air, sun or moonshine”’ because of alleged rebellious action.”®



*! The “‘vexation and chagrin” which this caused sent the governor to bed

‘with a deathly illness” for seven weeks, according to his own account. Dela-

vigne to Thormthlen (November 25, 1692). Delarigne papers.



™ Christian V to Iver Hoppe (September 3, 1692). Vest. Reg., 1670-1699.



33 See Neben-Rezess zum Interims-Vergleich, June 10/20, 1692 (Schtick, op. cit.,

TI, 405-407).



™% Von Holten, “ Liste paa huis jeg kommer till kort paa Cassen” (November 15,



1604). Delavigne papers.

%S Lorents to Directors (January 17, 1695). C. B., 1690-1718.

102 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



Thomas Berentsen, an influential planter, had been removed

from his lieutenant’s post and his place on the council.™



Delavigne’s relations with the Brandenburgers did not long

retain that spirit of mutual confidence which Thormdéhlen and

the king had imposed upon him as one of his first duties. On

Thormdhlen’s failure to secure from the Brandenburg company

the $,000 rdl. with which he expected to make part of his annual

payment for the lease, Delavigne had seized Brandenburg goods

to the amount of 9,820 pieces-of-eight.” The directors seem in

fact to have left the collection of the rental dues from the Bran-

denburgers to Thormohlen, who naturally disclaimed all respon-

sibility for the whole Brandenburg matter.” Acting upon his

master’s orders Delavigne had successfully protested against

the attempt of the Brandenburgers to lay claim to Crab Island.”



While the governor was being kept thoroughly occupied with

local problems, the proprietor Thorméhlen was having troubles

of his own with the implacable directors of the Company. This

difficulty began when the first payment became due in 1692.

The situation had even then begun to look dark to Thorméhlen.

Brandenburg had negotiated a new treaty with Denmark pro-

viding for a rental very much lower than what the directors had

insisted on when the Thormdhlen lease had been drawn up, and

the latter had not even been consulted in the matter. The king

had peremptorily ordered Thorméhlen’s governor to deliver up

the 16,000 rdl. worth of sugar which Lorentz had seized. Al-

though not included, according to Moth’s statement, in the in-

ventory of the property taken over by Thormdhlen, the latter

had looked upon it as one of his perquisites.



%* Berentsen to Delavigne (December 18, 1694); Delavigne to Berentsen (Feb-

ruary 20, 1695). Delavigne papers.



2 Directors to Lorentz (July 28, 1694). C. B., 1690-1718.



%8 Moth to Thormithlen (August 15, 1698); Thormthlen to Juel and Moth

(February 28, 1694). Ibid.



® Delavigne had sent Capt. Peter Iversen to Crab Island on December 19,

1694, just two days before the Brandenburg director had sent his frigate, the

Lion, there with orders to take formal possession. See above, pp. 88, 90.

Delavigne papers, Journ. (December 17 et seq.); Lorentz to Directors (January 6,

1698), C. B., 1690-1718.



* Moth to Thormuhlen (June 25, 1692); same to same (July 15, 1698). C.B.,

1690-1718.



104 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



inconveniences, loss of credit, and the like. Out of 98,875 rdl.

expended, he had received only $9,841 rdl. in return, making a

total cash loss of 59,584 rdl. The court admitted that he had

considerable ground for complaint, and in recommending that

the king extend him his good offices, that body called to mind his

former enterprises in various lines and held that he might render

the state considerable service in the future by remaining in

business.** Whether Thormdhlen secured any further satisfac-

tion from the Company is doubtful. Though he never recovered

from the shock which the West Indian proprietorship and the

accidents of war * gave his finances, he rose during the reign of

Frederick IV (1699-1717) to membership once more on the

Board of Trade (1704-1708), and just before his death in 1708

(December 25) he was made a member of the newly established

Board of Police and Trade.” The leasing of the factories in

Guinea and the West Indies had brought profit neither to the

lessees nor to the Company’s stockholders. If the investors

were to enjoy any appreciable returns, it was more likely to come

about through the honest efforts of their own trained employees,

loyally supported by directors who were willing to repose con-

fidence in them. One great European war was nearing its close;

another was to begin after the death of Charles I of Spain in

1700. In the lull between these two great struggles the Danish

West India and Guinea Company was to go through a period of

internal readjustment that was to enable it, better than in the

past war, to reap the advantages of Denmark-Norway’s neutral

position in any future complications. In this attempt to bring

the Company into line with the commercial demands of the age,

a chief part was played by the oft-mentioned John Lorentz who,

beginning afresh in 1694, gave the Company nearly eight years

of continuous and capable service.



36 Protokol over Kommissionerne udi Raadstuen . . . vol. 3 (July 24, 1694.)



% He stated that twelve of his ships had been seized by one or another of the

warring factions. O. Nielsen (op. cit., VI, 171), mentions a petition from

N. J. Arff, Thormthlen and W. and N. Edinger, presented in 1697 in which they

claim to have lost 500,000 rdJ. on ships seized during the war.



* Arkio-Meddel., 1886-88, 168, 164. The Board of Trade was united with



the Police Board by a royal order issued on March 23, 1708. The new Board

continued in existence until 1731.

CHAPTER V

THE GOVERNORSHIP OF JOHN LORENTZ



Wuen John Lorentz returned to St. Thomas to replace Dela-

vigne as governor in November, 1694, he had been for ten years

& participant in the troubled history of the company and its

colony as above related. This young Flensborger, according

to Pére Labat, had traveled in France, Spain and Italy, and

spoke French fluently. He first came over as assistant in the

company’s office with the irascible Milan. He had humbly

done the governor’s bidding and bent before his violent wrath,

and he managed to survive Milan’s administration and to do

service as a witness against him in Copenhagen. When Con-



felon



missioner Mikkelsen was sent to St. Thomas to give Adolph

Esmit a trial as governor and as loadstone for Spanish treasure,

Lorentz returned to his former post to the gratification of the

company’s directors whom he had impressed as a young man

of promise. After Esmit’s return to Denmark Lorentz served

under vice-governor Heins as the company’s bookkeeper. On

Heins’ death in October, 1689, two deputies from each of the

“nations” on the island (Danish, Dutch, French, and pos-

sibly German) elected him vice-governor to the great satisfac-

tion of the inhabitants. In 1691 he induced Madame Heins to

remain on the island as his wife, and on May fifth and sixth a

brilliant wedding was celebrated in the town of Charlotte

Amalia, to which the leading planters, Brandenburg function-

aries, and French and English captains in the harbor lent dis-

tinction by their presence.!

1 Lorentz's Journal (March 31, May 5, etc., 1691).

[105]

106 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



After Thormdhlen had leased the island Lorentz remained in

charge until Delavigne’s arrival in September, 1692. Even be-

fore Lorentz had been displaced, the directors had required him

to keep them accurately informed as to the state of Thormih-

len’s trade. In the summer of 1698 he returned to Copenhagen

to give the directors a verbal report on the St. Thomas situa-

tion. About the time that Lorentz was departing for Copen-

hagen, Joachim von Holten (who was later to become the

eighth governor of St. Thomas) wrote a letter to Thormihlen

filled with complaints against Delavigne and assuring Thormdh-

len that he had “‘lost a good servant (Sorgtrager) in John Lor-

entz.?_ Whether the letter was written with or without the

latter’s knowledge may not be said, but it was certainly in line

with Lorentz’s personal ambitions. Captain Peter Iversen’s

arrival in Copenhagen that summer with but a small cargo for

the proprietor Thormihlen led to an mvestigation by the latter

which caused him to issue a long list of charges against Gov-

ernor Delavigne, and to order one George Lorentzen (or Lau-

rentsen), whom he asserted that he had “trained to take

charge of the government,” to proceed to St. Thomas, place

the incumbent under arrest, and assume the vice-governor’s

position.’ With another administrative dispute threatening

at St. Thomas, and with the directors preparing to bring suit

against the proprietor at Copenhagen, it was surely the part of

the discreet office-seeker to be on hand where he might fish

in the troubled waters. For some unexplained reason the new

appointee never took office.



Lorentz assumed charge of the government on November 28,

1694, immediately following his arrival. He had come over by

way of the Dutch island of Curacao whence he had sent the

directors a letter telling of the bad conditions reported at St.

Thomas.‘ Lorentz, according to his own account, had come



2 J. von Holten to Thorméhlen (May 25, 1698). Delavigne papers.



> Thorméhlen’s examination of Captain Iversen and ‘“‘Irnst” Rongel (Sep-

tember 20); Thorméhlen’s nine charges against Delavigne (September 25); Thor-

méhlen’s order to George Lorentsen (September 25, 1698). Ibid. The latter's

name was also spelled Laurentsen.



“In his letter of January 17, 1695, Lorentz mentions having sent a letter

from Curacao on October 22, 1694. C. B., 1690-1718.

THE GOVERNERSHIP OF JOHN LORENTZ 107



not a whit too soon, for the English authorities in the neighbor-

ing islands had already forbidden their people from trading

with St. Thomas, while the French were designing to remove

Delavigne from his fort by force and bring him to the general

at Martinique because of alleged high-handed treatment of a

French ship in St. Thomas harbor. Lorentz found two of

the company’s three plantations © badly run down, the inhab-

itants dissatisfied with the government, and the Brandenburgers

still smarting under the robbery perpetrated by the “blond”

Legendre scarcely three weeks before. He prepared to apply

himself immediately to the task of rehabilitating the colony as

best he might under the liberal set of instructions with which

the directors had furnished him. These instructions deserve

some passing notice. With respect to the Brandenburgers

({ 14) he was to abide by the three-year arrangement made on

April 28, 1692, after which he should proceed according to the

original treaty of 1685. He was to keep on good terms with all

foreign “generals” and governors, assert the company’s right

to St. John, Passage (a small island just east of Porto Rico),

and Crab Islands, resist attacks from without, and prevent re-

bellion, whether of blacks or whites, from within.



Governor Lorentz was especially urged, by way of keeping on

good terms with his neighbors in the West Indies, to have noth-

ing to do with “sea-robbers,” though he was to be allowed to

buy properly condemned prizes when they might be offered

for sale. In his relations with the English, who were becoming

more aggressive as the war went on, he was soon to have a

chance to show his mettle. The most radical departure from

the previous policy, however, came as a result of an offer made

by Lorentz himself to the directors. ‘Inasmuch as he [Lo-

rentz] had undertaken to support himself and all the company’s

employees and soldiers on the income from the company’s

plantations and the poll tax,” so ran their acceptance of his

offer ({ 8), “we are satisfied on behalf of the company to accept

for it such surplus as may be left over, if any there be, leaving

it to his honesty and his oath to see that the conipany may re-



5 These were known as the “‘ New Quarter plantation,” the “Sugar plantation”

and “ Krumbays plantation.”

108 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



ceive what is due.”® In other words, Lorentz was given a free

hand to administer the Company’s affairs in the West Indies

exactly as he saw fit. The concluding paragraph of their in-

structions gives a still better idea of the new incumbent’s lati-

tude of action. “He may do whatever he finds needful for the

Company’s best interests, provided he immediately notifies

the directors; and inasmuch as we have confidence in his re-

liability and in his desire to promote the Company’s welfare in

all things, we shall not hold him responsible if he should risk

some of the Company’s resources and (which may God in his

mercy prevent) it should not turn fortunately as was expected.

And we shall besides, when the Company gains headway and

gets upon its feet, show our appreciation for his faithful service

in such a way that he shall see that he is not dealing with un-

grateful people. Finally,”’ they concluded by way of a parting

benediction, “we will wish him such a measure of success that

his good resolution may redound to the service of his Majesty,

the prosperity and growth of the Company, and to his own

honor and fame.”’?



The success or failure of the West Indian colony was put

squarely up to the new governor. The part he played in curb-

ing the efforts of the Brandenburgers and helping to bring about

the collapse of their plans for commercial expansion has been

discussed in the previous chapter. The perfect unity that had

characterized his former relations with directors Juel and Moth

continued during the years following his return. In March,

1701, he was able to report to his masters that the Branden-

burgers were carrying on little or no trade, having for a long

time bought nothing from outside merchants but a few slaves ®



* The original resolutions of the shareholders, passed at their meeting of

March 19, was signed by the following directors and shareholders: Jens Juel,

P. Bran{djt, M. Moth, W. Worm, A. Gyldensparre, N. Krag, R. Meier, W.

Mule, V. Lerche (Lerke), F. C. Adelaer (Adeler), P. Hiort, P. Lemvig, Nicol.

Janson (sic) Arf[f], C. Braem, J. Wurger, J. Kréyer, J. Matisen (for “Hr Canc.

Raad Adelaer”), and Frid. and Niels Miller. Resolutions of Directors

(March 19, 1694). C. B., 1690-1718.



7 Directors’ instructions to Lorentz (March 29, 1694). C. B., 1690-1718.



® Lorents and Van Belle had together bought a cargo of 154 slaves from a

Zeeland slave ship.

THE GOVERNORSHIP OF JOHN LORENTZ 109



and some “Campeachy” wood. On the island they had no

trade except a little in cotton when they made an occasional

purchase from a planter. “On the whole, they are quite

civil,” he reported, “and are waiting for a new treaty.”® John

Lorentz had every reason to be pleased with such a quiescent

situation and to pray for its long continuance.



The most numerous nation among the planters of St. Thomas

was the Dutch. Inasmuch as the number of prosperous planters

largely determined the size of the return cargoes, there was

considerable competition among the islands to secure planters

of means and induce them to settle permanently. Organized

into a militia corps these burghers could become an important

factor in defence against outside attack. As early as 1688,

when Europe was on the verge of war, Adolph Esmit had

offered eight years’ exemption from taxes to intending planters.

In the years 1690 and 1691 a number of Dutch planters had

come from St. Eustatius and Saba to avoid confiscation of their

property, especially their negroes, by the French who had just

taken possession of the island.” During the course of the war,

Governor Lorentz took measures to prevent their leaving. As

the war closed, and the refugees repeated their desire to go, on

the ground that St. Eustatius was a more healthful place to live

than St. Thomas (which was admittedly true) he intimated

that their real reason was the expiration of the eight years’

tax exemption. He tried to induce those leaving to pay the

tax for four of the eight years but was unable to prevent five

families from going, although one planter, Lucas Beverhoudt,

left his plantation on St. Thomas in full working order, to the

governor’s great joy. Just how many others eventually re-

turned does not appear.!!



The greatest obstacle to Lorentz’s constructive efforts was

privateering. Although Brandenburg was ostensibly an enemy



® Lorentz to Directors (March 27, 1701). C. B., 1690-1718.



%* Among these were Adrian Rinnels, Lawrence Westerbaen, Adrian Sorgeloos,

and John le Ducq (Duq). Delavigne papers; Lorents’s Journal (February 11,

1601, passim).



11 Lorentz to Directors (September 6, 1696), C. 3., 1690-1718; same to same

(January 22, 1698), Gov. C. B., 169$-1700; same to same (June 20 and 24, 1698),

C. B., 1690-1718.

110 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



of France, its African company’s factor in the West Indies

bought Spanish and English prizes captured by French priva-

teers whenever opportunity offered.'? These difficulties reached

their height in 1696 when French captains holding commissions

from Governor Du Casse of Petit Goave swarmed like birds of

prey around the mouth of St. Thomas harbor, seizing not only

enemies’ ships but vessels belonging to St. Thomas inhabitants."

To Governor Lorentz’s vigorous protests against these acts of

violence towards a friendly 4 power, Du Casse gaily replied that

those complained of were rascals, and advised Lorentz to have

them hanged when they came to St. Thomas again. Farther,

Du Casse accused Lorentz of selling passports to Curacao

skippers at 10 rdl. each. According to Lorentz’s account, the

Petit Goave governor bore a particular grudge against the St.

Thomas government because of Delavigne’s failure to pay him

for two kegs of indigo which he claimed were still due him, and

he threatened to get Lorentz out of his government “‘as he had

Delavigne.” The last thrust probably did not disturb Lorentz,

who knew better than Du Casse why Delavigne had been re-

moved. For the Count of Blenacq, “general’’ at Martinique,

the governor had mainly words of praise for the good order he

had kept among his privateers."



Although Denmark had not openly sided with Louis XTV, her

attitude of neutrality was looked upon as an indication of her

friendliness. For the Spaniards who had joined the league

against Louis XIV and Sweden it was not difficult to find an

excuse for attacking St. Thomas. The report that they were

planning an attack upon the island with three thousand men in

the summer of 1696 spread consternation among the planters

and well-nigh demoralized the population. The planters took



12 Lorentz to Directors’ (October 19, 1697); same to same (November 30,

1696), C. B., 1690-1718.



13 Governor Lorentz cites several instances. Benjamin Frank, a Jew, but a

Danish subject, had his ship detained and his skipper maltreated and robbed;

John de Windt’s ship was seized on the way from Curacao to St. Thomas, the

cargo was confiscated and the ship only released on deposit of 5,080 rdi. as

surety; two inhabitants who had a bill of sale from the Brandenburg factor had

their bark seized. Lorentz to Directors (September 6, 1696). C. B., 1690-1713.



4 Ibid.



112 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



In January, 1697," the French fleet above referred to left

Brest for the West Indies under Jean-Bernard Desjeans, baron

de Pointis. At Petit Goave, Pointis was joined by a fleet of

privateers under the command of Governor Du Casse and de-

parted in March for Carthagena on the coast of New Granada.

After a difficult siege the citadel was captured, and booty esti-

mated to be worth forty million crowns (écus) was loaded on

the French ships and promptly started for home. The English

vice-admiral Nevell had meantime come to the West Indies in

search of the French, who were assumed to have gone to some

part of the Spanish Main, probably to Porto Bello.” It was

important to prevent the captured loot from reaching Louis XIV

who might be able with it to prolong the war considerably. As

soon as a Martinique bark had brought the news of Nevell’s

presence in Caribbean waters to Petit Goave, the French au-

thorities compelled a Brandenburg captain in the latter harbor,

one Arduin, to take on board a French captain, a steersman, and

six French seamen and proceed to Carthagena to warn Pointis

and Du Casse of Nevell’s whereabouts. The French fleet ar-

rived in Brest on August 29 with the loss of but a single ship.



Admiral Nevell was furious when he heard how the warning

had been sent and fixed the blame upon the Danish authorities

on St. Thomas, who were after all responsible for the govern-

ment there. He wrote to the surrounding English governments

that they should try to break up St. Thomas’s trade on the sea,

and three privateers from Curacao and several from Jamaica

“‘were sent out to cruise on this island’s vessels, to prevent the

carrying on of trade with the French islands.” 4 The conclusion

of the Peace of Ryswick in September, 1697, helped presently to

relieve the tension between St. Thomas and her neighbors.



With the consummation of peace, however, piracy took the

place of privateering.” During the course of the war it had been



32 Chevalier, in his Histoire de la marine francaise (Paris, 1902), p. 205, mis-

takenly places the date at June 7, 1696. Guerin (Histoire maritime de France,

Paris, 1862) is probably more nearly accurate in placing the date of de Pointis’

departure at January 9, 1697 (IV, 69).



3 Cal. Col., 1696-97, No. 824 (March 18, 1697).



34 Lorents to Directors (October 19, 1697). C. B., 1690-1718.



% Cal. Col., 1697-98, No. 269 (March 1, 1608) and passin.

THE GOVERNORSHIP OF JOHN LORENTZ 118



deemed necessary only to determine whether a prize had been

legally condemned by a properly constituted admiralty court

before it was offered for sale in a neutral port. After the peace

it would be more necessary than ever for skippers to present a

clean “bill of health” for ships brought into foreign harbors.

The attitude of John Lorentz toward strange craft suspected of

irregularities is well illustrated by his action in the case of cer-

tain “rovers of the sea” of whom the most notorious is Captain

Kidd. Captain Kidd has passed into tradition to such an extent

that it may be interesting to see how this arch-pirate of legend

impressed people of his own time who had had unusual facilities

for studying men of his alleged profession at close range. Kidd

appeared before St. Thomas harbor on April 6, 1699 (O. S.?)

having lately come from Madagascar in the Quidah Merchant,

a Genoese vessel of four hundred tons, thirty guns, and eighty

men, and having been refused succor by the English at An-

guilla.* His appearance and action may best be told in Gov-

ernor Lorentz’s own words as he put them down at the time in

his carefully kept diary.”



“April 6.—Today, Maundy Thursday, there arrived before

the harbor an English ship which anchored just outside of can-

non range. Presently the captain sent his sloop [boat] ashore

with a person on board who came to ask the vice commandant

[%. e., Lorentz] whether he might come in free with his ship,

which his men had compelled him to seize from the Moors in the

East Indies—he could produce proof that he had been com-

pelled to seize it. The vice-commandant answered that if he

could produce proof in writing that he was an honest man, he

might enter, which message he sent by Lieut. Claus Hansen and

Peter Smith [a well-to-do merchant who had been associated

with the Brandenburgers in the slave-trade] who, however,

were not satisfied with his explanations, for he [Kidd] had re-



™ Cal. Col., 1699, No. 404 (May 18); ef. Cal. Col., 1689-92, No. 136 (May 18,

1689), where a letter from council of Nevis to Blathwayt has been dated 1689

instead of 1699.



® Lorents's Journal (April 6, 1699, etc.). Lorentz spelled the captain’s name

Cidd. Maundy Thursday: the day preceding Good Friday, Green Thursday.

The translation is not close, though reconstructed from very full notes.

114 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



quested the vice-commandant to give him protection from the

English royal ships, should they seek him here without orders,

from which the vice-commandant saw that he was a pirate, and

therefore deferred his answer till the morrow.



“April 7.—In the morning the vice-commandant called the

council together to consult as to whether or not the said sea-

robber’s request could be granted; but as he saw that it would

produce considerable friction between this land and the English

if the pirate were admitted and not delivered up on their re-

quest, it was resolved that no word, beyond yesterday’s mes-

sage, should be sent to him.



‘‘A man came ashore . . . with a written request that Kidd

receive protection on land until he could send a bark to New

England, present his case there, and prove that he was no sea-

robber, inasmuch as the governor there, Mylord Bellamont, was

the chief owner in the ship in which he sailed out of England

three years ago to cruise on the Red Sea for pirates. But his

request was flatly refused him, and besides, he was forbidden

to send his men ashore again unless they came into the harbor

with the ship.



“Long Friday was celebrated in the church today.



“April 8.—Today the pirates lying outside the harbor

have twice sent boats ashore at the harbor’s point. The vice-

commandant at once sent his men there, and they found that

seven men had been put ashore who maintained that they were

passengers . . . [and proved it]. Two of these secured permis-

sion to take a canoe and fetch their baggage, but when they

were on the way the ship spread sails and left, the canoe follow-

ing.



** Watch was kept in the harbor that night by Captain Vinck’s

boat.”



Although Captain Kidd was forced meekly to leave the harbor

of St. Thomas in his leaky vessel, and ceases thereupon to have

any personal connection with St. Thomas history, the island

authorities were presently to concern themselves with part of

his cargo,—his “treasure.” On leaving St. Thomas, Kidd

steered for San Domingo, but instead of risking putting in at

Petit Goave, he stopped at the little island of Mona, just off the

THE GOVERNORSHIP OF JOHN LORENTZ 115



southeast coast of Hispaniola, and apparently he anchored

later in the mouth of the “River Romano” near “Catherine”

island on the same coast. Here he was met—or followed—by

traders from Curacao, Antigua, and St. Thomas, to whom he

disposed of a large part of his cargo. According to information

given by the St. Thomas trader, Peter Smith, to Nevis officials,

one Henry Bolton of Antigua had furnished him with provisions,

and had undertaken to act as his agent in getting rid of his

cargo. To William Burke,” an Irish trader who had recently

taken a cargo of slaves from Barbados to Carthagena, and who

had done considerable business with the Dutch at Curacao in

his time, Kidd sold one hundred and twenty or one hundred and

thirty bales of muslin,” and finally, when he had disposed of

nearly all of his cargo, he bought a smaller boat (from Bolton?)

and left for New York.?! There he was to attempt to prove his

innocence before Lord Bellamont, part owner of the ship in

which he had left England, and the admiralty judges.



On Friday, May 27, 1699, about seven weeks after Kidd’s

departure, Burke came into St. Thomas on an English barken-

tine, approached Governor Lorentz, and asked the favor of a

private interview. With only Madame Lorentz present to act

as interpreter, Burke stated that he had been with the sea-

robber Captain “‘Cidd” and that if the governor would partic-

ipate with him, a large profit could be got from the said pirate.

To this the governor vigorously replied that he would have

nothing to do with pirates, and thereby give the land an evil

reputation. But if Lorentz was unwilling to receive the stolen

goods, the Brandenburg factor, Van Belle, had no such scruples.

That very night the searobbers’ goods were landed and stored

in the Brandenburg warehouse. The guard had informed the

governor of the stir in the harbor during the night, so the latter

began an investigation on the following day with a view to

finding out whether Van Belle had made the investment on his

own account or on that of the Brandenburg company.



3 Cal. Col., 1699, No. 616, I (July 7), No. 680, IX (July 10).



® Also spelled Bourck, Burch, Burcke.



* Cal. Col., 1699, No. 616, I (July 7).



®' Lands-Protokoller for St. Thomas . . . 1694-1711 (June 7, 1699).

116 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



The governor’s prompt measures alarmed the Brandenburg

officials. Their bookkeeper, Sivert Hoesz, as well as Burke,

came to parley with him in the hope of reaching an agreement.

On Monday the governor managed to seize some of the goods

which had been brought into the house of an inhabitant.** Lor-

entz, in a letter written July 4, 1699, mentions fifteen small

packages and sixty sacks of saltpetre as having been seized and

placed in the fort. Perhaps these included the goods referred

to. On June 1 Burke was arrested, to be released on June 7,

when the suit against him was begun. In the course of the

hearing, Burke testified that besides Van Belle, Messrs. Beck

and Moyart from Curacao and some gentlemen on Barbados

had a share in the cargo in question,*‘ and that he remembered

having paid Kidd 12,000 pieces-of-eight. A [Brandenburg?]

gunner testified that he had recorded delivery of 158 packages,

large and small, into the Brandenburg magazine. The court

concluded that Van Belle must have been cognizant of the

origin of the goods, and that he should therefore have a protest

sent to him, charging him with action prejudicial to the island,

that Burke should pay a fine of 300 pieces-of-eight for his In-

solentie, and deposit 5,000 pieces-of-eight by way of guarantee

that Kidd’s title to the goods was a legal one.**



In his letter to the directors describing the affair, Lorentz

mentions their having fined Van Belle 5,000 rdl.,* which helps

to confirm a suspicion that the latter was forced to put up the

deposit for Burke, who was only a go-between. The governor

refrained from seizing those goods which actually reached the

Brandenburg magazine. They were eventually put on board

the Brandenburg ship, the Seven Provinces, which Lorentz re-



32 Lorents’s Journal (May 27, etc., 1699).



33 Lorentz to Directors (July 4, 1699). C. B., 1690-1718. Ina letter of April

15, 1700, Lorentz informed the Directors that he had caused the 69 sacks of

saltpetre and 12 bales of cotton and “‘Netteldug” to be loaded on the Christian

V on the company’s account.



34 Burke case (June 7, 1699). Lande-Prot., 1694-1711.



46 Ibid. The court was composed of the governor and John (Johannes) de

Windt, Thomas Berentsen, Claus (Claes) Hansen, J. Rasmussen and Abraham

Matheusen, who signed with his mark.



% Lorentz to Directors (June 19, 1699). C. B., 1690-1718.



118 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



or surrender the money that Burke (or Van Belle) had deposited

in the Company’s treasury.“ Instead, Benbow made a report on

the island and its harbor, in which he stated that it “would be of

great use to our English nation in case of war in these parts,”

that it could be easily fortified, whereas at present it was but

“‘a receptacle for thieves.” “* The stubbornness of Lorentz,

whose main concern was the retention of the five thousand

pieces-of-eight and the seized goods for the Company, led the

Earl of Bellamont, the English governor of New York, to con-

tend that Burke had bought protection from the Danish gov-

ernor with the proceeds of Kidd’s spoils.‘ His statement that

Burke “will not be parted with” turned out entirely true, for in

August, 1701, that pirates’ friend was reported out of reach of

the arm of English law in the French part of St. Kitts.“ Lorentz

was able to assume so bold a front because he knew through in-

formation secured by Peter Smith on Nevis that Admiral Ben-

bow was merely putting up a bluffing game, and was exceeding

his orders in the hope of forcing the restitution of Kidd’s and

Burke’s boat.“



In July, 1699, another Madagascar pirate, Tempest Roger

(or Rogers) a former acquaintance of Kidd’s from those regions,

appeared in St. Thomas harbor to ask leave to repair his ship,

but he was not allowed to remain.“ But pirates did not always

get off so easily. In a letter written in April, 1700, Lorentz

mentions having meted out exemplary punishment to four out

of nine pirates “who came here some time ago,” leaving the fate

of the remaining five in the hands of the directors.“ Their con-

fiscated goods, amounting to 2,600 rdl., helped to justify his

zeal for the interests of his masters and make the performance

of duty doubly joyous.



© Lorentz to Directors (November 9, 1699). Goo. C. B., 169§-1700; Cal. Col.,

1699, No. 907 (October 28).



® Benbow to Vernon, Cal. Col., 1699, No. 907 (October 28).



“4 Bellamont to Lords of Trade, ibid., No. 890 (October 28, 1699).



“ Codrington (Antigua) to Council of Trade, ibid., 1701, No. 784 (August 25).



@ Lorentz to Directors (November 9, 1699). Goo. C. B., 1694-1700.



| Same to same, ibid. (August 10, 1699); Cal. Col., 1699, No. 880, II (Au-

gust 17, etc.); thid., 1700, No. 848 (October 18).



Lorentz to Directors (April 15, 1700). C. B., 1690-1718.



120 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



negroes, and maintain good relations with the neighboring

governments. He must see to it that the Company’s planta-

tions and magazine pay a surplus above their expenses, and

particularly that homeward-bound ships of the Company have

a good cargo that will enable the shareholders to secure dividends

on their investment. That even as capable a man as John

Lorentz should be successful in all these respects was quite im-

possible, but that he should be able to hold his position until

his death, and retain possession of the island against the threats

of Spaniards and English, is something for which he deserves no

little credit.



Lorentz was always alive to what he considered the Com-

pany’s best interests. His prompt report of John Mathew

Leers’ attempt to lease the island in 1695 helped to nip that

proposal in the bud, for he wrote that the rumor had “caused

considerable grumbling among the inhabitants, who had all

sworn to leave the land if it were leased out again.” ©! His letters

concerning the lucrativeness of the slave trade led the share-

holders of the Company to undertake with Jacob Lerke the

sending of a ship to Guinea for a cargo of slaves, and eventually

brought the Company into the business on its own account.®?



On June 10, 1702, Governor John Lorentz died in office, the

first governor save one to obtain that distinction. Of the six-

teen years that had elapsed since he first arrived in St. Thomas

as an humble “‘assistant,’’ he had served the Company eleven

years as its governor. Under his clear-headed and vigorous

guidance, the Company had been brought from bankruptcy to

solvency, and its colony had become firmly established in the

Caribbean.



5! Lorentz to Directors (May 8, 1695), C. B., 1690-1718. The Leera’ project

was supported by the Brandenburgers, who expected to be able to agree with

Leers better than with the Danish company. Schtick (I, 248, 249) discusses the

matter, but is unable from the Brandenburg documents to explain why it was

dropped.



82 Ibid (November 30, 1696), Gov. C. B., 1694-1700.



8 Christopher Heins. See above, p. 80.

CHAPTER VI



ST. THOMAS AND ST. JOHN AS PLANTATION COLONIES (1688-1788)



Ir the importance of the history of the Danish islands in the

West Indies is to be judged by the extent of the interests in-

volved, or is to be measured by the actual influence of the is-

lands upon the history of the Caribbean or on the state of Den-

mark-Norway, the propriety of devoting an entire volume to

them might well be questioned. But if a rather detailed study

will disclose the rise of a fairly typical plantation society, if it

will show on a small scale the sort of thing that took place in

West Indian lands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

on a large scale, such as the rise of the sugar industry and the

slave trade, the effort need require no apology. For the islands

reflected very distinctly the economic solidarity of the West In-

dian community at a time when it was looked upon as one of

the main sources of the world’s wealth.



St. Thomas can scarcely be said to have assumed its place as

a regular plantation colony until 1688, when the Company’s

accounts first began to be kept in money instead of sugar. In

that year the first census was taken, and although not a scien-

tific affair, its results are not without interest.! This report

showed that there were 90 plantations surveyed, and a total

white planting population to record of just 148. These were

distributed among eleven nationalities as follows: 66 Dutch, 31

English, 17 Danes and Norwegians, 17 French, 4 Irish, 4 Flem-

ish, $ Germans, $ Swedes, and one each of Scotch, Brazilians,

and Portuguese. Of the 76 adults listed, 56 are entered as plant-

ers, 5 as carpenters, 2 as planters and merchants, and one each

as minister (Lutheran), schoolmaster, fisher, captain on the



1 Land Lister for St. Thomas, 1688. The figures given in Hust, op. cit., 29, vary



slightly from those given here. The report was signed by Franz Martens, who

was a member of the council and a tavern keeper, Andreas Brock, who acted



as secretary, and Sigmont Lick.

(121)

122 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



Company’s bark, tavern keeper, overseer, turner, planter and

tailor, and planter and miller. In the village of Charlotte

Amalia,? 87 persons were enumerated, of whom 21 were adults

(12 men and 9 women), 11 were children, one was an indentured

servant, and 4 were negroes. Of the adults, 8 were Dutch, 4

were Danish, $8 were English; there was one each of French,

Spanish, and “high German” inhabitants, while the nationality

of the remaining three was not recorded. The trades repre-

sented in the village and the number in each were: tailor, 2;

innkeeper, 1; seamstress, 1; shoemaker, 1; carpenter, 2; black-

smith, 1; and cotton ginner, 1. Among the 21 adults were 10

Calvinists (Reformed), 7 Lutherans (distributed among high

Germans, Danes, and Dutch), and 2 Catholics. The number of

white men, women, and children in the island totalled 317, and

the negroes 422, which latter figure includes one Carib Indian,

three squaws, and three mulatto women. In the census taken

three years later (1691), just when Thorméhlen’s proprietor-

ship began, the information seems to have been gathered with

greater precision, especially with regard to the plantations.

The increase from 317 whites in 1688 to 399 in 1691 was no

doubt partly due to the publication of the edict concerning the

eight years’ exemption from taxes offered to new settlers,

coupled with the outbreak of hostilities in Europe. The num-

ber of negroes had risen at a rather more rapid rate, they num-

bering 555, of whom 361 were put down as “capable,” which

meant full-grown negroes capable of performing their full quota

of work.®



It must be borne in mind that despite the voluminous na-

ture of the census records, they are not such as to permit the

investigator to claim absolute accuracy for the figures drawn

from them. They will, on the whole, give a reasonably ac-

curate idea of the actual state of affairs in many respects; but

with regard to the number of slaves, especially in the second

decade of the next century and after, when St. Thomas has be-



2 Charlotte Amalia, the name which the port of St. Thomas still bears, was

named in honor of the queen of Christian V, in whose time the town was founded.

For present-day view of town, see photo facing p. 257.



* One Indian squaw and four children are included in the list of negroes.







1% THE DANISH WEST INDIES



sugar mill should be put up on Milan’s former plantation, and

ventured the opinion that if sugar cane should prove successful

on the Company’s plantations, it would prove more profitable

than cotton or tobacco.’ The main reason for the Company’s

having hitherto received so scant returns from its investment

was explained by the fact that the older islands yielded more

sugar than the newly settled. As the area devoted to sugar

increased, the culture of tobacco decreased. There was always

a good market for the latter in Denmark, however, and to-

bacco from Porto Rico, Virginia, and other regions frequently

found a place in the Company’s homeward-bound cargoes.

Sugar and cotton remained the leading products during the

period under discussion. The sugar cane was cut by the ne-

groes with a sort of hatchet called kapmesser, and carried by

them to the mill or “sugar works” with which the greater part

of the plantations after 1700 were usually provided In 1606

Governor Lorentz reported seven sugar mills to be at work pro-

ducing brown sugar, which was to be sent to Denmark by a

ship expected from Copenhagen.” By 1715, the number of

sugar plantations provided with mills had reached thirty-two

out of a total of forty plantations devoted solely to sugar.""_ The

motive power was furnished mainly by windmills, though these

came gradually to be supplemented by treadmills turned by

mule-power. Compared with modern methods the waste was

of course tremendous. At least ten negroes were required to

keep one such mill running; two, who were called “rollers,”

feeding the cane stalks between the upright wooden cylinders,



ported a successful trial in growing ginger. Heins to Directors (January 2,

1689), B. & D., 1688-89.



7 Resolutions of governor and council (February 19, 1689). The members

of the council were Henry Irgens, Joachim Delicaet, John de Windt, and John

Lorentz.



* Heins to Directors (August 20, 1689). B. & D. 1688-89.



9 See Appendiz H., p. 318.



* 10 Lorents to Directors (November 30, 1696), C. B., 1690-1714.



" Land Lister for St. Thomas, 1715. For description of an eighteenth century

sugar mill, see Oxholm, De danske vestindiske ders Tilstand . . ., pp. 44 ef seq.,

and J. C. Schmidt, Blandede Anmerkninger samlede paa og over Ejlandet St.

Kroiz . . . (Samleren, 1788, 2 B).



126 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



period of the War of the Spanish Succession. This was due to a

variety of causes, both local and general. John Lorentz, with

Juel and Moth, had done much to put the Brandenburg African

Company out of the running. Quarrels within that company’s

management had done the rest.



The revival of the Danish company’s slave trade had bene-

fited both it and the planters. The liberties allowed the latter

in disposing of their plantation produce had helped to make

them capitalists. This prosperity is indicated by the increase

in the number of plantations laid out just after the opening of

the new century. In the years 1692 to 1700 only fourteen new

plantations were assigned to planters.'* These plantations had a

total working force of seventy-nine slaves. By 1705 an addi-

tional thirty-seven new plantations had been laid out, with a

working force in that year of two hundred and eighty slaves.

From 1691 to 1715, the total number of plantations had risen

from one hundred and one to one hundred and sixty. It is the

increase of negroes, both relatively and absolutely, that gives

the most striking proof of the rapid development of St. Thomas

as a plantation colony during these years. While the number of

white men, women, and children increased only from three

hundred and eight-nine to five hundred and forty-seven (1:1.4),

thenumber of negro slaves increased from five hundred and fifty-

five to three thousand and forty-two (1: 5.5), during the same in-

terval (1691-1715). In other words, the number of slaves had

risen nearly four times as fast as the number of whites.



John Lorentz had laid the foundations of a fiscal system by

which the inhabitants of the colony bore a proper share of the

expenses of the civil government. These expenses were largely

defrayed by a poll and a land or “ground” tax. The poll tax,

which appears first to have been collected in the year 1692-1698,

amounted to 214 rdl. for each planter and for each “capable”

slave, and to 114 rdl. for the planter’s wife and for each of his

adult children. For “manquerons,” or those unable to do a full



18 Land Lister for St. Thomas. The names of the planters as they appear in the

records are: David Liron, Reynier Claever, Jean Cramy, Zent van Wundergem,

Jan Arnout, Samson Burin, Mintje de Tooy, Jiirgen Hansen, Mathias Terling,

Jtirgen Carstensen, Joris van Overschelde, Pieter de Windt.







128 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



placing from four to six men there and encouraging them to

begin planting,” but it was not until 1717 that the project was

actually carried out. In November, 1716, Governor Erik

Bredal wrote the directors that many of the St. Thomas in-

habitants were inclined to go to settle St. John, but that they

were held back solely by fear of the English, who were unwilling

to let any nation go there to cut down the timber. On the

twenty-fifth of the following March, the governor had a vessel

loaded with guns and ammunition, and with provisions from a

ship that had recently brought in a cargo of flour, meat, etc.,

to take him to St. John with twenty planters, sixteen negroes,

and five soldiers.



‘*T have planted there the flag of our most gracious king, and

fired a salute,” wrote the governor, “and then we feasted, and

drank the health, first of our sovereign, and then of the Com-



EH



pany. Later, I selected a place on which to build a fort, a con-

venient location which commands the inlet to the harbor as well

as the harbor itself, and a level space beneath it on which a

village can stand. The harbor is quite secure, and when a person

is within it . . . he sees land all about him. I have permitted

the planters to indicate which pieces of land they preferred, and

have selected a place for the Company’s plantation just a

cannon-shot distant from the fort (which is to be built there).

Later the planters have returned because of their fear of the

English and are simply waiting cautiously to see what the latter

will attempt... .”



17 Directors’ instructions to Esmit (November 9, 1687). A. E., 1689-89.



38 Bredal and Council to Directors (November 24, 1716), B. & D., 1717-20. In

a letter dated July 28, 1715, Governor Crone and council informed the directors

that John Henry Sieben had recently proposed, on behalf of himself and fifteen

other planters from St. Thomas, to begin the occupation and cultivation of St.

John. B. & D., 1714-17.



1 Bredal to Directors (May 8, 1718), B. & D., 1717-80. “‘ Thi de frygter for ds

Engelske og sidder ikkun og lurer paa, head de ville tentere.””



180 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



needed.” By 1720-1721, thirty-nine planters had received deeds

to plantations on St. John.”



The early inhabitants came entirely from St. Thomas and

were equally varied in their nationality. Nine of these were

Danes, five were French Huguenot refugees or of refugee stock,

and nearly all the rest were Dutch. Their coming was prompted

by a variety of motives. Some had sunk hopelessly into debt on

St. Thomas, others had had badly located plantations there,

while many of them naturally expected to improve their previous

state. Their plantations were nearly fifty per cent. larger than

those on St. Thomas, their average width being one thousand

five hundred and fifty-six feet. The number of negroes held at

this early period cannot be ascertained, but within a decade of

the actual settlement,—namely in 1728—there were one hun-

dred and twenty-three whites to six hundred and seventy-seven

blacks (1: 5.5), while in 1788, the year of the first serious slave

insurrection, the whites numbered two hundred and eight, and

the slaves one thousand and eighty-seven, a slightly higher

ratio of white inhabitants (1: 5.2). Although the number of

plantations was increased only twenty-five per cent. in those

five years, the number of negroes on them increased sixty per

cent. Nevertheless in 1788 St. John had but ten negroes on the

average to each plantation, to St. Thomas’s twenty-five.



The Company went into the plantation business on its own

account early in its career. The encouragement that it was ex-

pected to give to plantation life on St. Thomas undoubtedly

accounts in large part for the willingness of the Company’s di-

rectors to permit the Brandenburgers to establish a factory



33 Conditioner tilstaaed St. Jans Indeaanere (March %, 1718). Ibid.



See Appendiz H., p. 407.



35 Governor Frederick Moth wrote to the Directors early in 1726: “St. John is

now entirely settled, [so] that there is no more land left to give away except at

the Fort, and the Company’s plantation, which is still lying idle, as it is not

yet surveyed. ... Next year the greater number of the St. John inhabitants

are to begin paying the poll and land tax. There are already about 20 sugar

works built, and others in process of building, so that I calculate that St. John

will produce 600,000 to 800,000 pounds of sugar, besides [some] cotton, on [all of]

which customs duties must be paid. . . .” Moth to Directors (March 6, 1726),

B. & D., 1785-87.



182 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



figures for 1705. At this time, when the island was prepared

to reap the advantages of Danish neutrality, the number of

negroes had jumped to 251, their inventory value to 13,441

rdl. (58.7 rdl. each), while the three plantations were entered

on the books at 6,289, 3,141, and 905 rdl. respectively. Although

the second had fallen eight per cent. in value, the first had in-

creased seventy-two and one-half per cent. and the third sixty-

nine per cent. over its inventory value in 1698. After 1715

the value of the plantation as recorded in the books remains

stationary, while the number of the negroes gradually decreases

from two hundred thirty-eight in 1716 to one hundred ninety-

six in 1726.77



The following table, while based upon a careful examination

of the Company’s books, is not presented as giving an absolutely

dependable picture of the plantations as dividend-paying propo-

sitions. It is never quite certain that accounts have not been

“doctored” for emergencies, or that the intricacies of the

elaborate bookkeeping of two centuries ago have been con-

pletely solved. In fact the officials themselves were at times

hopelessly tangled in the meshes of their own system.



THE COMPANY'S PLANTATIONS ON ST. THOMAS



M Abbreviations: 1 5. Company's “Sugar Plantation”; N. Q., ‘“‘ New Quarter Plantation”;



Year 1690 1691 1683 1698 1700 170 1702 =: 1703 1704

Total negroes.. 122.. 158.. 193.. 178.. 180.. 176.. 177.. (69) ....

Value of ne-

see eee 10,957. . 14,038. .16,144.. 9,043.. 9,504.. 9,380.. 9,500.. 4,019..

Value of 8. Pl.. 4,572.. 4,743.. 7,122.. 3,651.. 3,654.. 3,638.. 4,155.. 5,415. .

Value of N.Q.. 2,318.. 3,300.. 6,871.. 3,414.. 3,763.. 3,763.. 3,679.. 2,081..

ValueofM.B. 457... 457.. 1,112.. 536.. 536.. 536.. 536.. 380.

Total _invest-



ment....... 18,424. .22,538. .30,749 ® 16,644. .17,457. .17,317. .17,870. .12,795. .

Proceeds from

8. PL....... 1,137.. 2,026.. 2,514.. 2,041.. 2,422.. 807.. 2,260.. 2,219. .2,849



| 28



Proceeds from

N.Q........ 410.. 3,486.. 2,851.. 1,441.. 1,337.. 720.. 936.. 360..1,663

Proceeds from

M.B....... 248.. 645.. 268..——.. 135.. 134.. 155..[-472].. 464

Total..... 1,795.. 6,157.. 5,133.. 4,882.. 3,704.. 1,661.. 3,351.. 2,116. .4,976

Per cent. profit

oninvestment 9.7.. 27.2.. 16.7.. 26.38 21.6.. 9.6.. 19.1.. 17. .26(%)



Cf. Appendiz H., p. $18. L. L., St. Th.



28 The figures given for 1708 cover the period from June 9, 1702, to Decem-

ber. $1, 1708. All money values are given in rdl.



* This includes only the sound or “capable” slaves.



» The high values for 1698 apparently have some connection with Thor

méhlen’s contract which was discontinued in 1694.



31 This percentage covers 1)4 years (August 8, 1698, to February 8 1700).



184 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



were stored in the Company’s warehouses until one of its ships

arrived from Copenhagen or the Guinea coast. If the directors

were not certain of a cargo they would leave it to the Guinea

slave-ship captain to take whatever cargo was on hand back

with him to Denmark. As long as the company had only St.

Thomas and St. John, it was rarely necessary to employ more

than two ships a year to empty the St. Thomas magazine, and

frequently a single vessel was ample. The difficulties that the

local factor often met when he tried to force the planters to

sell their produce to the Company at a fixed price, will be dealt

with in a later chapter. Europe-bound ships usually took dye

woods (pockwood, fustic, Campeachy wood, etc.) on board for

ballast. Sometimes a schooner was sent over to Porto Rico for

hides or tobacco if interloping trade at St. Thomas had been

dull.



A few illustrations will serve to show the character of the

trade, and give some indication as to its extent. The Frederick

the Fourth, under Captain Peter Andersen Weerde, left St.

Thomas on April 6, 1706, with the following cargo, secured at

the prices indicated,* quoted in rixdollars, ‘“ Mark” and “Skill-

ing.”



Rd. M. Sk



9,112 lbs. Campeachy wood at 2 rdl. per 100 182 1 6



7,507 “ stock fish (dried cod) at 2 rdl. per 100 10 -



4,484 “ fustic . 67 s —



88,867 “ Brazil wood 529 $s _-



360,005 ‘‘ [brown] sugar at $}4 rd. per 100 12,600 1 —



11,672 “ white sugar at [price not given] 620 1 -



29,137 “‘ cotton at 12 sk. per Ib. $8,642 - i



6,789 “ cacao . 914 2 _



1,42 “tobacco “4 5 10



129 “‘ indigo at 1 rdl. per lb. 129 - =



89 “ caret (sea turtle) 69 $s il

staves for barrels and casks 180 2



nails $2 - -



provisions beyond those needed 167 s —



19,829 Rdl. 4 M.—



In the following year, Peter Smith, the wealthy Dutch mer-

38 N. J. for St. Th., 1705-08 (April 6, 1706).



186 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



’



The foreign ports to which the West Indian cargoes were re-

shipped were mainly in the Baltic region, and included Ltibeck,

Danzig, Stettin, Kénigsberg, on the South Baltic, Stockholm

and Gotenborg in Sweden, and (beginning with 1750) St. Peters-

burg in Russia, and Amsterdam in Holland. Among local towns

to which West Indian products were distributed were Kiel,

Flensborg, and Aabenraa in the duchies; Elsinore, Nyborg,

Slagelse, Odense, and Aalborg in Denmark proper; and Bergen,

Christiania, Trondhjem and Fredrikshald in Norway.”



According to the list of shipments from Copenhagen to

foreign and domestic points which is contained in the Company’s

“Udskibnings og Passeer Sedlers Copie-Bog, 1709-1754,” no

sugar and little cotton were shipped out of Copenhagen from

1712 to 1720, inclusive. From 1721 to 1738, when St. Croix

was purchased, the shipments to foreign ports were more than

twenty times those to domestic ports. During the period from

1729 to 1749, sugar was exported but a single year *! to a foreign

port. It was in September, 1729, that the Company began re-

fining its own sugar,“ and this fact, combined with the king’s

edict of July 4, 1788, requiring privately owned refineries to use

only the sugar that came from the West Indian colonies as long

as the supply held out, will explain the falling off in exports.

The purchase by the Company in 1787 of the two principal

refineries, those owned by the Pelt and Weyse families, gave the

Company a monopoly of the refining business,“ and made it

possible for it to absorb most of its own sugar.*



© Udekibnings og Passcer Sedlere-Copie-Bog, 1709-1754, passim.



“1 In 1741, 11,448 Ibs. of sugar were sent to Stockholm. Jbid.



«2 Mariager MS., 180. The Company had been granted the privilege of put-

ting up a refinery, by the king on April 17, 1721. Vest. Reg., 1699-1746.



*? Mariager MS., 149.



44 See table showing exports to domestic and foreign places in Appendiz L,

pp. 328-831.







188 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



particularly Barbados, in the first half of the seventeenth cen-

tury, and Jamaica in the second half, led the English to begin

exporting slaves to their own American possessions. It is worth

noticing that the English slave trade began in earnest about

1640, just when a Dutchman is said to have introduced the art

of sugar making to the English colony of Barbados.* The es-

tablishment in 1672 of the Royal African Company of England

has been previously noted. This company was enjoying its

greatest prosperity during those years when the Danish West

India and Guinea Company was attempting in the face of tre-

mendous obstacles to secure a permanent foothold for its col-

ony at St. Thomas.‘



A trade that had had the sanctity of century-long custom was

little disturbed by the conscientious scruples of reformers.

There was no one to plead the rights of the negro as Las Casas

had championed those of the Indian. The few timid voices

that had dared to raise themselves on the negroes’ behalf be-

fore 1700 were scarcely heard in the din of the struggles for

commercial supremacy and exploitation.5 Once the sugar

planting had been well begun, the demand for suitable labor

would become insistent. To the seventeenth-century planter

there was but one course to pursue. Over on the Guinea coast,

in a latitude but slightly lower, was an unlimited supply of la-

borers, many of them already accustomed to servitude, who

readily adapted themselves to the conditions of plantation life.

The problem of the day, so far as the planters and the adminis-

trators interested in plantations were concerned, was simply

one of method,—how best to bring these laborers where they

were needed. The attempt of individuals to solve this problem

led to interloping, an art in which the Dutch were preéminent;

while the attempt of merchant-statesmen led to the formation

of companies under state or royal patronage.



§ Lucas, III, 80, 81.



‘The average annual dividend declared between 1676 and 1688 amounted

roughly to eight per cent. annually, reaching as high as twenty-two per cent.



during the first two years. See Beer, The Old Colonial System, 1660-1688,

I, 848.



5 Beer (I, $22) cites an anonymous pamphlet published in 1684 and a protest

against the slave trade by the Pennsylvania Quakers in 1688.







140 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



A single illustration will serve to indicate the nature of the

slave market at the Guinea factory from the solely commercial

point of view. To those who were in the trade, it was purely a

business matter. The Hope Galley under Captain Lawrence

Span arrived at Christiansborg castle on December 15, 1726,

with a cargo, not counting the brandy, of 16,185 rdi. A fort-

night later when the New Year’s stocktaking took place, the

Company was credited on its Guinea books with fifty men slaves

valued at 84 rdl., twenty-five women at 48 rdl., three boys at 50

rdl., and four girls at $6 rdl. each. This appears to have been

the Company’s wholesale purchase price. The actual cargo

taken on board on March 6 included 238 souls, indicating a

brisk business in the opening months of the year. The invoice

of the departing ship shows the following cargo and values:

one hundred and forty-seven men at 88, seventy women at 56,

eleven boys at 56, and ten girls at 40 rdl., making a total value

of 17,872 rdl® If the discrepancy in the prices of adult male

and female slaves as shown in the above invoice was general,

it might appear that the mortality among the women in the

cargo was higher than among the men, for in the St. Thomas

market women sold for nearly or just as high a price as the men,

but there is no direct evidence to show that such was the case.



The horrors of the “middle passage” have been frequently

painted in most lurid colors. Indeed, at its worst it would be

difficult to exaggerate the picture of misery presented by a re-

turning slaver. Naturally, it was to the captain’s as well as

the Company’s interest to bring as large a part of his cargo

safely to the other side as possible. But where the captain’s

reward depended on the number brought over, or where the

officers could bring over slaves on their own account, the temp-

tation to overcrowd the vessel was very great. In case of

stormy weather, when the hatches had to be closed down, the

air in the crowded hold became s0 stifling as to suffocate many.

Good water was often difficult to obtain, and bad water, as well



Three Points, and between Ziode Wolta (river Volta?) and Hardra, as these

were usually better than the Loanga or Angola slaves. Martfeldt MSS., V1;

Secret-Raadets Breve, 1783-$9.



*N. J. for Guinea; N. J. for St. Th. (1727). See Appendiz J., pp. 820-926.



142 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



he took over the Guinea trade in 1689, the directors required

the lessee to keep a minister on board the slave ships and at the

Guinea factory.” It is nevertheless to be feared that the zeal

of the trader met with greater rewards from the authorities

than that of the priest.



There is good reason to suppose that the extent of the slave

trade must have standardized its processes, so that there was

little difference in the treatment of negroes along the various

parts of the Guinea coast. The Dutch probably got their car-

goes across the ocean with the least loss of life. The Branden-

burg officials at the Gross-Friedrichsberg factory were largely

Dutch, and what happened there may be considered typical for

the coast. A surgeon of the African Company gives in his

journal a vivid description of what he saw up to the time that

the slave-ship was ready to sail. The surgeon, who began his

service there in December, 1692, wrote as follows: !!



**As soon as a sufficient number of these unhappy victims

were collected, they were examined by me, the healthy and

strong ones were bought, while those who lacked as much as a

finger or a nail or were in any way defective—called Magrones '*

—were returned.



‘The slaves that were taken were made to kneel, twenty or

thirty at a time; the right shoulder was greased with palm-oil,

and it was branded in the middle with an iron that bore the

initials C_—AB—C. (churfirstlich afrikanisch-brandenburgische

Compagnie); then they were strictly guarded in the lodgings

provided for them. Where a band of fifty or sixty slaves had



“been secured, they were coupled together in twos or threes

and driven to the coast under escort. It was my duty to watch

over the transport, for which purpose I was carried in the rear

in a hammock, so that I could see the entire column. Once the

coast was reached, a prearranged signal brought the ship’s boats

ashore to bring their black cargo on board. Some of these un-

fortunates followed their leaders weakly and unresistingly, even



1 Vest. Reg., 1671-99, fol. 166, 16 (July 27, 1689).



11 Surgeon Johann Peter Oettinger’s Journal (quoted in Schtick, I, $81 et seg.).



18 Probably a corruption of “manquerons,” a term applied in the West Indies

to negroes who were below standard.



144 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



negroes secured. Certain parts of the coast had a bad reputa-

tion as sources of slave supply, for their negroes were liable to

grow violently mutinous when threatened with bondage. Such,

for example, were the E] Mina negroes from the Dutch part of

the coast.



The percentage of loss on the Guinea-West Indian slave-

ships varied from ten to about fifty-five per cent. of those taken

on, so far as the limited number of available statistics shows.'*

The scenes that ensued when the prospective buyers boarded

an incoming slave-ship were frequently well-nigh riotous and

frightened the poor blacks, who had little or no idea of what

awaited them, almost to death. The white men would make

a wild dash for the negroes that they intended to buy, and sep-

arate them from the main group by way of securing first right

to purchase. Sometimes the cargo would be taken on shore,

kept under guard, and sold in small lots until entirely disposed

of.



The eagerness with which the directors of the Company took

up the slave trade as a means of increasing the shareholders’

profits, and the tenacity with which they clung to their monop-

oly of the trade once they had begun it, emphasize the impor-

tance ascribed to this traffic by the moneyed interests of the

seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It was not until

the governorship of John Lorentz, whén St. Thomas begins to

be administered as a normal, well-ordered colony, that the

directors were able to carry out any plan for direct participation

in the slave trade with ships owned by the Company; and it was

not until 1738, after the Company had suffered a number of

severe losses at sea, and about the time it began negotiations

for the purchase of St. Croix from France, that it was ready to

let the slave trade fall back into private hands. This experience

of over a third of a century, during which the Danish West

India and Guinea Company attempted to supply slaves to its

own colony, and also to make St. Thomas a depot for the supply

of slaves to the neighboring lands, needs to be explained in some

detail.



‘6 These percentages are drawn from the figures of ships sailing in 1608, 1690,

1700, 1707, 1714, and 17838.

THE SLAVE TRADE IN THE DANISH WEST INDIES 145



It was the profits made by the Brandenburg African Company

in some of its early Guinea voyages that brought home to the

observant governor Lorentz the possibilities of the slave trade

as a source of revenue for the Danish company. Two Branden-

burg slave-ships * that arrived in St. Thomas in November, 1696,

before the peace at Ryswick had been concluded, and hence

while Louis XIV was still at war against the league of opposing

states, brought to St. Thomas more than one thousand one

hundred pieces of human freight. One of the Brandenburg

captains whose cargo contained four hundred and eighty slaves

remarked to the governor that if he had had more room on

board he could have made as fine a bargain in slaves as he could

ever desire.” The other captain confided to the governor the

opinion that the Danish forts on the Guinea coast afforded

excellent prospects for the slave trade. These successful ven-

tures and the information he received from the captains led

the Danish governor to express to the directors the hope that

the Company would take up the Guinea trade, “since all other

trade is as nothing compared with this slave trade.” If the

directors would only make a beginning with a few hundred

Guinea slaves, urged Lorentz, they would not find it a bad ven-

ture, but “the first experience would give them such joy, that

the slave trade would hold its place before all other sorts of

commerce, and the Company would feel itself impelled to con-

tinue it.” * The governor’s enthusiasm was not lost on the di-

rectors, who had great faith in their representative at St. Thomas

and were especially anxious to get the Company to the point

where it could pay dividends and thus regain the confidence of

the investing public.



Nicholas Arff, the Guinea lessee, had, as we have seen, per-



Frederick III under Capt. Jacob Lambrecht with six hundred and thirty,

and the Electoral Princess under Capt. Wouter Ypes with four hundred and

eighty slaves.



47 Lorents to Directors (November 80, 1696), C. B., 1690-1718.



%8 Ibid. The French were also becoming increasingly active in the Guinea

trade during the interval preceding the outbreak of the War of the Spanish

Succession. On July 9, 1701, Louis XIV issued an arrét granting to a new

Guinea company certain rights that had been held by a former one. Scelle,

Le traite negrisre, Tl, 687.

146 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



mitted his lease to expire because of serious and unforeseen

losses brought about by the European war. Just at the time

that the Ryswick negotiations were being concluded, the Danish

West India and Guinea Company was being reorganized under

a new charter which bore the date of September 28, 1697. New

conditions demanded a corresponding readjustment. Baron

Jens Juel and Mathias Moth, who had so faithfully backed the

governor in his endeavor to stifle the Brandenburg African

Company’s activities at St. Thomas, were retained as directors.”

The Company’s total capital, including a ten per cent. assess-

ment made in 1695 in order to secure capital to send a ship to

St. Thomas for a cargo,” was just 84,888 rdl.,2 marks. On this

investment the shareholders had received no other returns than

the three or four per cent. yielded by the Thormdhlen lease.

It was not until late in 1697 or early in 1698 that the directors

decided to send a ship and cargo to Guinea and the West Indies.

Finding themselves unable to secure a large enough sum from

the stockholders, the directors turned to a wealthy merchant,

one Jacob Lerke, who contributed half of the funds necessary

for the new venture. The result was the voyage of the Copen-

hagen Bourse to the Guinea coast under joint auspices. But

this initial venture fell below expectations, for out of the five

hundred and six slaves taken on at Christiansborg and along the

Guinea coast, only two hundred and fifty-nine were delivered at

St. Thomas in September, 1698, and thirty-seven of these died

shortly after landing. A mutiny had broken out on board, in the

course of which many had been killed or had jumped overboard.

To cap this misfortune scurvy had helped to reduce the numbers

to scarcely more than half of the original cargo.*! The surviving

slaves were sold at 85 rdl. each, which appears to have been three

times their cost price in Guinea.?? The excellent state of the

West Indian market as compared with the low prices prevailing



1 Mariager MS., 108.



® The Company had resumed its administration after the Thormdhlen fiasco

late in 1694, On March 7, 1702, Matthias Moth made a clear and fairly detailed

résumé of the Company’s activities in Guinea and the West Indies since 1695.

See Comp. Prot., 1697-1734.



*1 Lorentz to Directors (October 12, 1698), Gov. C. B., 1694-1700.



33 See Appendiz J, pp. 320-S26.



148 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



When the report spread through the islands that the Danish

governor was expecting a slave-ship to arrive, a Jamaica trader

sent word to St. Thomas that he would like to invest 30,000

rdl. in slaves if the governor would guarantee their delivery at

a certain time.” This the latter was unable to do, so that when

the expected slave cargo did arrive he had to employ a local

merchant to take the surplus slaves to Hispaniola and the sur-

rounding islands.”



A very considerable share of the negroes sold at St. Thomas

were brought in by interlopers.” Unless its treasury happened

to be empty, the Company rarely permitted planters to buy

directly from the slave captain, and never allowed slaves to

be landed without charging an import duty,—usually four per

cent. This duty or “recognition” was as a rule paid in natura,

which in a cargo of men, women, and children of assorted sizes

often required some ingenious calculations. The selling price

varied from twenty-five to one hundred per cent. above the

cost or wholesale price, according to market conditions. In one

of the agreements with the Brandenburgers it was stipulated

that either party might share with the other in the purchase

of interlopers’ cargoes. After the coronation of Frederick I

as king in Prussia in 1701 the Brandenburg African Company

was left to its own fate, and practically its sole activity until

its discontinuance in the reign of Frederick William I consisted

of such occasional purchases as those referred to, and of pro-

testing if its rights appeared to have been transgressed or

ignored.



The distribution of slaves to other islands was usually done

by traders from those islands. The keen trader, hearing of the

approaching arrival of a cargo from Guinea would hasten to

St. Thomas, if business conditions would warrant it, and wait

there for weeks in order to get the first chance at buying a

sion of the buccaneers, Jamaica in particular progressed rapidly in its plantation

life. Lorentz to Directors (January 22, 1698), C. B. 1694-1700; W. RB. Scott,

Joint-Stock Companies to 1720 (8 v., Cambridge, 1910-1912), II, 28.



% Lorentz to Directors (January 22, 1698), C. B., 1694-1700.



» In this way Peter Smith took a batch of forty-four negroes off on his bark, on

condition of receiving half the profits.



% Appendix J.

THE SLAVE TRADE IN THE DANISH WEST INDIES 149



slave cargo. The local St. Thomas traders frequently bought

considerable numbers of negroes for customers in other islands.

Some good-sized fortunes were built up at St. Thomas during

the War of the Spanish Succession in just this way.



The following summary taken from the Company’s journals

kept at the St. Thomas factory indicates how the Company

disposed of one entire cargo. On July 8, 1710, a Zeeland ‘nter-

loper, Captain David Diniesen, sold the following slaves to the

Danish company:



26 women = 26

11 “2/8 boys” = 71/8

90 “1/8 boys” = 10

2“1/8boys” = 2/8



200 head = 181 5/6 Pies de Indies

at 65 rdl, = 11,819 rdl., 1 mark.



RECEIPTS (in the order of purchase)



Ral, Ral.

Dete Number Price each Total} Date Number Price each Total

July 10 . 2 *°1/2 boys” 50 100\July 12 men 300

1“1/2 ” 2 **2/3 boys” 85 170

1°°1/2 girl” 50 9 men 900

11/2 boy” 68 1 girl” "3

1°1/2 ” 60) 1 ‘ia girl” 85

1 “1/2 boy” 60) 3 men 100 300

8“1/2 boys” 60 480) 2 women 100 200

1 “1/2 boy” 40) 24 men 100 2400

1“1/2 boy, 60 3 women 100 300

1“1/2 ial 60) 11/3 boy” 33 1/3

2 as ” 90 180 1 “1/2 boy” 45

12/3 boy,, 100) 5 men 100

1 “3/3 girl” ROlJuly 14 1 man 100

21/2 "60 120|July 26 8 men 100 800

1“H2 & ” 60 2 women 100

4°2/3 boys” 75 300 37 men 100 3700

1 “1/2 boy” 60 4 women 100 400

1“ 1/2 boy” 60jAug. 14 20 men 100 2000

4 men 100 9 men 100 900

1 woman 100 omen 800

4 men 100 400/Sept. 19 1 “2/3 boy” 80

Totals...... 187 head 14,443 1/2 rd.



tErovissous from July 10 to August 31... .140 rdl., 1 mark.

een July 10 to November 8, 7 negro men died and were debited on the books at 665 rdl.



No. ing we negroes sold dying belare sale 19.. 187



o 6

oo

150 . THE DANISH WEST INDIES



Total receipte from negro sales......... 0... e cece ee ete eee 14,443 1/3 rdl.

Total cost of wettiininnnststpesssesesessssesssrs ga gages 11,950 1/6

Food. 2.2" 76

11,959 1/6. ———_—__—_

Net profit. 0.0.0.0. ..cccc cece ce ceeececeseseeeecueeees 2,484 1/6 rd.



2,484'/, -+- 11,959'/, = 207/10, the percentage of net profit on

the cargo, according to the books, exclusive of current ex-



penses.



It will be noticed that the cargo was sold mainly in small

lots, that the Pies de Indies had no definite relation to the price

except in the case of the full-grown negroes, and that the cargo

was practically disposed of within five weeks. The larger lots

were sold mainly to government officials who knew the intrica-

cies of the business and were often able to take advantage of

the situation to their own profit.”?



The prices of slaves, wholesale and retail, during the War of

the Spanish Succession afford a good trade barometer for St.

Thomas. Denmark was neutral, and in a better position than

in the previous war to reap the advantages of neutrality. From

45 and 80 rdl. in 1702, the wholesale and retail prices respectively

rose by 1704 to 60 and 100 rdi. and three years later to 80 and

100 rdl. The highest point seems to have been reached in

1714, when slaves sold at St. Thomas for 120 rdl. each. This

price is excelled in 1722 by a cargo that brought 125 rdl. per

head.



Business conditions at St. Thomas, which were evidently

stimulated by Denmark-Norway’s neutral position during the

Spanish Succession War, suffered a slump after its close. Not

until the end of the Northern War (the treaty of Nystadt was

concluded between Sweden and Russia in 1721) when Sweden

had been reduced to a second-rate power, do commercial condi-

tions in the Danish islands, as evidenced by the state of the

slave trade, begin to show improvement. During the years

preceding the conclusion of peace with Denmark (1720) the St.

Thomas government prepared itself more than once to resist

a rumored Swedish attack.*? The depredations of pirates, re-



31 See below, p. 191.

8 Udtog af Secret-Raads Prot., 1710-20 (August 5, 1715; June 2@, 1716).

Martfedt MSS., Vol. VI.



‘

‘THE SLAVE TRADE IN THE DANISH WEST INDIES _ 151



viving difficulties with the Spanish neighbors of St. Thomas,

complications with the English in the Leeward Islands because

of Danish occupation of St. John, and the peculations of its

local officials, combined to make the position of the Danish

company and its colonists extremely uncertain. Besides, this

was a period of hard times when the St. Thomas government

supplied the lack of coin by issues of paper money. In attempt-

ing to account for the business depression the St. Thomas au-

thorities were inclined to place the emphasis upon the ruin of the

formerly lucrative trade with Spanish America.”* The planters

on the other hand were convinced that the Company’s officials

at St. Thomas and those directing the Company’s policy were

responsible for the changed conditions.** Certain it is that the

loss of the principal foreign market and the disappearance of

hard cash were bound to affect all forms of business and partic-

ularly the slave trade, which was very difficult to carry on

except on a cash basis, and which required considerable sums

for its successful prosecution. To be forced to wait until crops

matured and then to find themselves face to face with a variety

of petty local restrictions, was the prospect that awaited the

traders who attempted to carry on business at St. Thomas on

a barter basis.



The Danish West India and Guinea Company seems rarely if

ever to have had more than two ships at a time on the Copen-

hagen-Guinea-West India run. Dutch interlopers furnished

far greater numbers of slaves for the St. Thomas market than the

Danish Company.** In view of the expertness and daring of

the ubiquitous Dutch trader it was not necessary to invest

much of the Company’s capital in slave-ships except when the

Dutch slavers failed to appear. As a rule the St. Thomas au-

thorities had only to await the arrival of a cargo which they

could accept or refuse as they saw fit according to the condition

of the slaves and the state of the market.



During the years from 1697 to 1738,—that is, from the time



33 Governor and Council to Directors (August 10, 1714), B. & D., 1714-17.



™ The commission sent over by St. Thomas planters in 1715 in order to bring

about certain changes in policy is dealt with in Chapter IX.



% See Appendiz J.

152 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



the Company began the Guinea-West India trade on its own

account until the directors voted for its discontinuance,—the

Company lost not fewer than eight ships. The greater number

of these were employed in the Guinea as well as in the West

India carrying trade. The total number owned by the Company

at one time or another in this period amounted only to twenty.*

The following résumé of the losses will show their approximate

extent:



The Guldenlew, intended for the Copenhagen-St. Thomas

run, was lost at Lessde, off the Norwegian coast, on Novem-

ber 20, 1702.



The Cronprincen (the Crown Prince) was lost at Isle de Prince

in the Guinea gulf on May 81, 1706, through the explosion of its

powder magazine while en route from Guinea to St. Thomas.

Only five on board were saved of whom three eventually reached

Denmark.



The Christian V and Frederick IV left Guinea on May 29,

1709, with a rich cargo of gold and slaves. Both of them missed

St. Thomas and were wrecked in the Bay of Honduras on

March 7, 1710. The Spaniards confiscated their cargoes and

brought them to Porto Bello.



The Christiansfort, while on its way to Copenhagen from

Bergen where it had been forced to winter, was lost with its

West Indian cargo at Héje Weerde March 2-8, 1713.



The Jomfru Alette was captured on October $1, 1717, by a

Swedish privateer, while on its way from Norway to Copenhagen

with a West India cargo.



The Salvator Mundt was wrecked, August 15, 1729, on

Anegada reef near Virgin Gorda while en route from St. Thomas

to Copenhagen with a return cargo.



The Christiansborg was wrecked in the Cattegat on its return

from St. Thomas on September 17, 1780.



During the decade preceding the purchase of St. Croix (1788)

the policy to be pursued with regard to the slave trade was an

all absorbing question at the meetings of the stockholders.

In their instructions of November 16, 1723, the directors had

specifically sought to encourage private traders to sell their



© Vest. Reg., 1699-1746; Mariager MS., 110 ot seq.

THEE SLaue Yeeee 1% YEE DANISH WEST INDIFS 158



slaves af the St. Whee: fectory.™ Four years later Frederick

Holansted whe lend beem eouployed as bookkeeper in the Com-

pany’s Cepesingen office for about twenty years advised the

darectess agemet the Company's active participation in the

slave trade, but is advice was not heeded. From 1728 to 17531,

inclastve, the Cammpany made a vigorous attempt to revive ilx

Gutnes-West Indian commerce. At least three new ships were

pet isto active commision, and about 200,000 rdl. according

to Holmsted’s account were sunk in the venture, but with no

prospect of the Company's being able to pay interest on more

than half of that sum. When the directors and chief stock



holders met m February, 1734, there ensued a heated debate

as to whether or not the Company should continuo the trade

In this discassion there seems to have been no mention of

humanitarian or religious arguments, the sole question being

one of dividends. The news of the arrival of the Jaurhury

Galley at St. Thomas with only two hundreid forty. two of her

original cargo of four hundred forty-threo slaves ™ wan ined

with telling effect by those who opposed the continued partlei



pation of the Company in the slave trade. ‘These opposition

leaders included three directors ® and three “chief sharchold



ers”’ ® (Hovedparticipanter). In the written argument drawn up

by these men is included the following estimate of moneyn ox



pended and received in connection with the Jaarburg Galley,

which statement they assert to be a “proper and true rela.

tion” of how matters really stood.*!



The ship Learburg Galley has cost................0555 7H rl 4 ab.

Repairs and equipment... .............0.. cc cece eens 12,881 .u'

Cargo . . . and insurance on slaves.................. 81,000 “ a “is"

Interest om sip and oquipment from date of sailing to

return, and of cargo . . . at only 6 per cent......... 3o22 “3 “

Total cost of expedition................. 55,554 rdl. 1 m.



® Holmsted's “ Deduction” (February 4, 1734), Co. Prob., 1697-1734. Cf. also

Hist 64 et seg.



™ B. & D., 1788-34 (May 8, 1783).



® Blome, Holmsted, Klauman.



* C. A. von Plessen, Dose, Kreyer.



“! Deduction og Voto (February 25, 1734), Comp. Prot., 1697-173§.

154 THE DANISH WEST INDIES

On the other hand, there should be deducted for deteriora-



Profit on gold and other goods. . .3,157 rdl. 4 m. 10 sk.

Freight which ship should earn



from St. Thomas hither. ...... 4,110 “2“ 6“

7,268 “ lm.

12,268 rdl. 1 m.

Delivered to Fort Christians-

borg surplus of various goods

from the ship, which with

usual 10 per cent. advance for

freight amounts to.......... 14,281 rdl. 4 m. 14 ak

On the other hand, the ship has

taken slaves, etc., at the fort

| Cr 3,976 “

Leaving. ..............0005 10,805 rdl. 4 m. 14 sk.

An order (Assignation) for which is to be redeemed at

Cape Coast. ......0 00. cecccecceeeeeeeseeeeeues 1,608 “ $“

Slaves on St. Thomas have been sold for goods, in part

for 50 per cent. above the cash price.............. 26,658 “ 3“ 6%

To balance account. ...........--0ceeee eee 16 “ 8 “

Total......... 50,857 rdl. 8 sk.



The advocates of Company participation in the slave trade

had used figures based on the Laarburg Galley’s last voyage as an

argument in support of their views.



“‘ According to the figures we have quoted,” ran in effect the

arguments of the opponents of slave-trade under the Company,

“‘there is a loss, up to the time of the ship’s return, of but (sic)

4,697 rdl., 4 sk. on this voyage, which with one exception is the

most fortunate of twenty voyages which have been undertaken.

It must at best be called a bad business, when so considerable

a capital as over 50,000 rdl. must be furnished and is expected

to yield interest while it is being risked in the waters of three

continents, and, after all that, is still unable to make a better

showing to the stockholders.”



The victory of the opposition was decisive. In the final

vote eighty-five out of a possible one hundred and thirty-four



votes were registered against the Company’s continuing in the



- 186 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



labor problem as it appeared to the merchants and statesmen

who were called upon to solve it was merely one of method; for

African slaves remained in the eighteenth, as they had been in

the seventeenth, century “the strength and sinews of this

western world.” They were indeed the chief agency that fur-

nished the wealth, for the control of which European nations

were willing to throw down the gage of conflict and usher in

titanic wars. In fact, no small part of those resources which

were dissolved in the smoke of eighteenth-century European

battlefields was extracted from fertile West Indian plantations

of cotton and cane by the sweat of the negro’s brow.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SLAVE AND THE PLANTER



Few indeed are the negroes in America who are able to tell

from what part of Africa their ancestors came or to what tribe

they belonged. Though they have every “prospect of pos-

terity” the sources by which they might develop a “pride of

ancestry” are. shrouded in impenetrable mystery. Which of

his forbears came from Calabar or Loango, from the El Mina

tribe or from Madagascar, it would be next to impossible for

any negro to tell, and the problem would certainly tax the in-

genuity of the most skilful genealogist. Yet the black popula-

tion was as varied in its way as the white. Besides the brand

of the importing company and the owner there might be found

on the imported negroes ' in any plantation colony the tattoo

marks and slashings that were peculiar to tribes of many differ-

ent characters, scattered along the African coast from Senegal

to Loango. These imported negroes were drawn from all sta-

tions of life in their native land. Their numbers embraced

rich and poor, haughty chiefs and humble retainers. Not in-

frequently had a chief been forced to sell some of his own numer-

ous wives that he might keep his contract with a punctilious

trader.? A negro who had been accustomed to rule in his na-

tive land was not unlikely to prefer death to bondage. If he

was landed alive he might be expected to make trouble for his

owner by running away or by stirring up rebellion among his

fellows. Freshly imported slaves were distributed among the

older and the native-born slaves in order that the problem of

adjustment to the new condition of servitude might be ren-

dered less acute. But the period of “apprenticeship,” during

which the raw laborer had to be broken in to the routine of his

task, must always have been trying both for slave and owner.



1 Called Bosal negroes by the Danes and Dutch.

2 Oldendorp, Udiog . . . (Kjtbenhavn, 1784), Part 1, p. 179.

187}

158 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



The status of the negro was not fixed by any single “black

code,” but was determined by a series of laws passed by the

colonial authorities from time to time. These regulative

mandates began to appear before 1700 and became more severe

as the ratio of negro to white population increased. When

there were three adult whites for each five adult slaves, as was

the case in 1691, there was obviously little difficulty; but when

there came to be not fewer than eight full-grown slaves for each

adult white person, as was the ratio indicated by the census re-

ports made in 1720 and 1725, the situation became vastly more

complicated. With the increasing size of the plantations *

absentee landlordism became more general, a larger number of

planters was forced to resort to white managers, and in many

instances the supervision of the slaves was left to negro drivers.‘

The local government often found it difficult to impress upon

the planters the urgent need of keeping close watch upon their

slaves.



Upon an owner’s taking possession of a plantation, his first

care was to have his negroes clear a plot of ground and plant

such things as maize, yams, sweet potatoes, beans and cassava

upon it. The negroes were expected to raise all their own food,

except for such low-grade fish or defective Irish beef as might be

allotted to them when the food supply ran short.® A very few

plantations were devoted mainly to “provisions,” particularly

on St. Thomas, but never to exceed four per cent. of the total

number.’ In course of time each negro or negro family was

allotted a plot of ground, and not infrequently the negroes

were permitted to sell the surplus for themselves.



In the busy season the negroes’ working day was long and

hard, though no harder than the lot of many a white farm hand

of to-day in the Mississippi valley during the harvest and

threshing season. At about four o’clock in the morning the



3 The size of the average plantation on St. Thomas in 1725 was nearly twice

that in 1691.



‘ Usually referred to as Bomba negroes.



5 Bredal to Directors (July 8, 1718), B. & D., 1717-20. Provisions are

generally referred to as Kaast or Cost in the documents.



© In 17265, out of a total of one hundred and seventy-seven plantations on St.

Thomas, seven were used for producing provisions. Cf. Appendiz H, p. $18.



rr



160 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



Such goods were too frequently found to have been stolen from

the slave’s owner or from some neighboring planter.



The planters’ most constant difficulty was with runaways.

Although St. Thomas was but a small island, it did not reach

its maximum cultivation until towards the end of the first

quarter of the eighteenth century. The result was that with the

increasing severity that accompanied the development of the St.

Thomas plantations, slaves were constantly disappearing into

the “bush” or wild forest. In order to cope with this problem

the planters were early organized into a sort of militia whose

members were assigned to do duty, either on horseback or on

foot, in the various parts of the island. This planter-police

was especially useful during the War of the Spanish Succession

in guarding against raids on St. Thomas plantations by lawless

elements from among the belligerents.? Not infrequently hunts

for runaways (maron-negers) were organized in which slaves

who could be trusted were employed to do the rough work.



The chief means of communication between the more remote

and inaccessible plantations and the harbor on the south side

was by canoe. The mountainous character of the island and

the torrential downpours to which it was subject rendered the

making and repairing of roads a costly matter; but the numer-

ous “bays” with their convenient beaches lent themselves

to the keeping of canoes and small sailboats. The latter were

frequently used by white men who with a few negroes would

sail off to Crab Island, for instance, the best turtle-fishing

ground near St. Thomas. When the slave-hunt in the bush

became too successful, it is not strange that the hunted negroes,

who were often proficient in handling the canoes, should take

to the boats and pull for Porto Rico. There, just beyond Crab

Island, was a promised land from which rarely indeed was a

slave returned. The government at St. Thomas labored in-

Placater for St. Thomas. The preceding paragraphs on negro life on the planta-

tions are drawn mainly from an article by J. C. Schmidt, an employee on the

Princess plantation owned by Governor-General Schimmelman. It appeared

in Samleren for 1788 (2. B.) under the title Blandede Anmarrkninger, samlede

paa og over Ejlandet St. Kroiz i Amerika.



*In Kopibog for St. Thomas, 1708-15 (July 2@, 1704) is a list of the various

planters, etc., with their duties and places to which they were assigned.



162 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



The matter of doling out punishment to unruly negroes had

its serious difficulties. It early became apparent that with the

establishment of sugar planting as a fixed industry, the punish-

ment of slaves would have to be done under the supervision

of the Company’s officials. In theory the “Danish law” of

Christian V was supposed to apply, but the local officials were

given considerable leeway in its administration, with the result

that punishments were inflicted pretty much according to

custom and necessity. The planter would recommend what he

wished done, and the privy council with the governor would

issue the final order. One planter’s request, made in 1704, that

a slave be punished for running away by having his foot chopped

off, was considered too severe, so the poor wretch was only

“hamstrung.” '* Sixteen years later another negro belonging

to the same planter was punished with the amputation of a foot,

and his owner was reimbursed with an indemnity of 120 rdl.'*

From 1720 onwards, indemnification of planters for legally

killed or injured negroes appears to have been regularly re-

sorted to, a special tax being levied on the planters for that

purpose. Occasionally a case for which no law could be found

to apply was appealed to the directors in Copenhagen, and

judgment requested. This occurred once when a planter’s

daughter had had illicit relations with a negro belonging to

another planter. The West Indian officials recommended

corporal punishment and life imprisonment for the woman,

and burning [alive?] “according to the custom of the English

and the Dutch” for the man. The negro appears to have

escaped, though the king’s sentence seems to have been solemnly

pronounced from the pulpit, both in the West Indies and in

Guinea. The woman’s fate is not revealed.”



The privy council of St. Thomas, itself a body of planters,

was naturally inclined to give the planter the benefit of the

doubt when his relations with his slaves were called into ques-



47, P., 8t. Th., 169§-1711 (April 21, 1704).

UN. J. for 1720 (May 18).

Yn 1748, a planter who thus lost a slave received 170 rdl. Roy. Libr.,

Uldall. Saml., No. $0 fol. (October 21, 1748).

“" 1p, Mariager’s note to Directors (May 26, 1782). B. & D., 1738-34.



164 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



other inhabitants from selling intoxicants to negroes.” The

idea that alcoholic drinks helped to acclimatize the new arrival

had a firm hold on the popular mind. Negro feasts and dances

were considered a constant menace. It is easy to understand

why the whites should especially fear a negro mob crased by

drink. The legislative device of prohibition by law was not to

be seriously applied to the negro until after slavery had ceased

to exist, and then in the present chief home of the American

negro, the southern United States.



Insurrection among its slaves has always been considered the

most terrible experience that a slave-holding society could

suffer. Whether in Rome with its slave risings, in Sicily or on

the Italian peninsula, in Virginia with Nat Turner, or in a sugar

colony in the West Indies, the prospect of a general servile

uprising has equally alarmed the ruling class. It was during

the first governorship of John Lorentz in 1691, a year after the

first serious insurrection reported in the English colony of

Jamaica,” that clearly defined rumors of a negro plot against

the whites are first heard.*> During those early years, when the

greater number of the slaves on St. Thomas were native Africans,

it is not strange that threats should have been breathed against

the governor’s life and that planters and Company officials

alike were constantly on the lookout for conspiracies among

the slaves. Cruelty on the part of an individual planter was

likely to be rewarded by his slaves running away. Planters

and officials must have realized the economic advantages of

good treatment of so valuable a part of their plantation invest-

ment as their slaves. It was likely to require something more

than individual cases of cruelty to bring about actual insurrec-

tion.



The most persistent motive that led to general unrest among

the slaves was lack of food. When months of drought ruined

the crops of maize, sweet potatoes, and other foods which the



* §. P., 1699-1714 (March 19, 1706); ef. Martfeldt M8S., Vol. I (Mandate

of Governor Moth’s bound with Martfeldt’s notes, dated December 11, 1741).



24Southey, Chronological History of the British West Indies (2 vols., London,

1826), II, 158.



34 Lorents’s Journal (February 28, 1691).



166 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



ing those five years, but of only twenty-five per cent. in the

number of plantations. Clearly St. John was rapidly forg-

ing ahead as a sugar island. St. Thomas, on the other

hand, had begun to decline as a plantation colony; much

of its ground had been under cultivation for half a century.

Many of its planters, as the census lists show, secured planta-

tions on St. John which they managed by means of hired over-

seers, they themselves remaining on St. Thomas.” The difficulty

so often experienced by planters in securing honest and capable

managers (Mesterknegte) intensified the dangers of absentee

landlordism. It was not always possible for all the plantation

owners to keep their plantations supplied with white overseers

despite the Company’s threats of fines and confiscation.



The uprising of the slaves on St. John began late in Novem-

ber, 1788. During the spring and summer preceding there had



been a long period of drought, followed in July by a destructive

hurricane which had inflicted considerable damage upon the

already suffering crops as well as upon buildings and shipping.?!

A plague of insects had destroyed many of the products of the

islands, and the negroes were threatened with famine. Another

storm in the early winter was especially severe on the maize

crop on which the negroes largely depended for their food.

In order to check the disorders among slaves which such a suc-

cession of disasters naturally encouraged, Philip Gardelin,



© Land Liste for St. Jan, 1738; ibid, St. Thomas, 1733.



31 The governor and council reported two ships, thirteen barks, two schooners,

and two two-masted boats, many canoes, sloops, and ships’ boats to have been

washed ashore and practically destroyed. Martfeldt MSS., Vol. VI, 227 et seq.

(July 28, 1788). In the report (Generalbrev) sent by the St. Thomas govern-

ment to the Directors on June 18, 1788, it is stated that because ‘of the drought,

the Company's plantation on St. John yielded only sixty-two hhd. of sugar,

where one hundred and fifty hhd. had been expected. B. & D., 1782-3}.



168 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



Thus did the authorities attempt to strike terror into the hearts

of the restless, half-famished negro population.



On Monday afternoon, November 23, 1788, a very badly

frightened soldier and some panic-stricken refugees from St.

John appeared in the fort at St. Thomas harbor and poured

into the ears of the astonished governor and his council a most

fearful tale. Early that morning twelve or fourteen of the

Company’s negroes had come up the path on the mountain-

side to the fort overlooking Coral Bay on St. John, each of them

with an armful of wood. When the sentinel shouted, “Who is

there?” he received the answer, “Negroes with wood,” and

opened the door. Rushing inside, the negroes pulled sagar-

cane knives (Kapmesser) out from the wood and murdered the

soldier on the spot. Meantime other negroes had assembled

and together they rushed in upon the sleeping corporal and his

six soldiers, killing all but one (John Gabriel) who in the early

twilight managed to save himself by crawling under a bed, and

later escaped through the bush and down to a canoe by the

seashore. With the garrison out of the way the negroes pro-

ceeded to raise the flag and fire three shots from the cannon

at the fort. This was the signal for a general slaughter on all

the plantations on the island.



The ranking magistrate on St. John, John Reimert Soedt-

mann,** and his stepdaughter were among the first victims

of that fateful day. A band of negroes, including some of

Soedtmann’s own, routed them both out and put them to death

in the early morning. Soedtmann’s wife was saved by the cir-

cumstance of her being on a visit to St. Thomas. Roaming

about from plantation to plantation in that dim tropic dawn

they slaughtered such whites as they could find, planters and

overseers, women and children. As the bloody work proceeded,

the band increased their numbers. The Company’s and Soedt-

mann’s negroes were joined by others;** and by the middle of

the afternoon a body of eighty desperate blacks, half of them



34 Host (p. 91) refers to him mistakenly as Christian Soctman.



36 Among the others were the negroes of former Governor Suhm, of town-

judge Lorentz Hendricksen and of Pieter Kriyer. Gardelin MSS. (Novem-

ber 28, 1783); ef. Martfeldt MSS., II, “Om Rebellionen paa St. John.”



170 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



his plantation, consequently they did not descend the mountain

path toward Deurloo’s plantation until 3 o’clock in the after-

noon. When they came they found themselves confronted by

the few cannon with which the plantation was furnished. Fear-

ing to face the cannon with their charges of ball, they betook

themselves to the bush, from which they emerged at intervals

to fire blindly and clumsily at their ertswhile masters. Had

they rushed their opponents at the start the negroes might

at the expense of a few lives have mastered the plantation and

captured its defenders. Instead they kept up their desultory

firing during the greater part of the night and resumed it the

following morning with scarcely any loss to the whites. The

arrival of the news at St. Thomas had paralyzed all. Wives

trembled for their husbands, mothers for their children. Gov-

ernor Gardelin shared the general consternation. It was not

until former Governor Moth appealed to Gardelin not to aban-

don the children of his government to the barbarity of their

heathen slaves that a boat with sixteen or eighteen soldiers,

led by a sergeant and a corporal, was provisioned with food and

ammunition and sent to the relief of the St. John planters.

Several creole slaves with guns accompanied the party.



The arrival of the reinforcements which were commanded by

William Barens, a well-to-do Dutch planter of St. Thomas,”

put new heart into the besieged party. Further reinforce-

ments, consisting largely of negroes belonging to the Company

and to planters on St. Thomas,*! enabled the planters to retake

the fort and disperse the negroes to the woods. Urged on by

the Company’s officials, the soldiers and planters on St. John

began a war of extermination. Fora time the negroes managed

to use the Suhm plantation as their rendezvous,” but before the

Christmas season they had been pretty effectually scattered



mother which was $000 x 1500 feet in size. Three “capable” slaves and four

children constituted his labor outfit in 1788. L. L., St. J., 1788.



“ He was credited in the census of 1783S with more than forty slaves.



“' Gardelin reported sending twenty-one of the former and twelve of the



latter. Gardelin to Sergeant Thomas Magens (November 25, 1783). Gardelin

MBS., Bancroft Collection.

4 Pannet’s Relation.



172 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



forces.“ On February 17, that is, not long after this disap-

pointment, the St. John planters again appealed for assistance

from the English. On Sunday, March 7, another English cap-

tain, John Maddox, came from St. Kitts and landed on the

island with about fifty volunteers,” though his entire party was

reported to Governor Gardelin as consisting of seventy men.*!

A carefully worded contract was drawn up specifying with pre-

cision the duties of both parties and enumerating the rewards

to be given for slaves captured. The attorney for the govern-

ment, “fiscal” Ditlof Nicholas Friis, was sent to St. John to

see that the contract was adhered to. Such elaborate pre-

cautions proved quite unnecessary. After a vain and wearying

search Captain Maddox suddenly came upon the rebels on the

eleventh day (March 18), but he was taken by surprise, for the

negroes killed three of his men and wounded five others without

any loss to them, so far as could be ascertained.’? Maddox’s

men stood not upon the order of their going; they fled at once

and left the island on the following day.



Stratagems, attempts at poisoning, and the armed forces of

Danes and English had failed alike to dislodge or exterminate

the desperate slaves. In the extremity of their despair the

Danish colonists turned to the French on Martinique. A

French boat was lying in the harbor, and three or four days

after Maddox’s departure, the French skipper set sail for Mar-

tinique with the Company’s bookkeeper, John Horn, on board.

Horn’s instructions permitted him to offer the French four-fifths

of the remaining rebels—(their numbers were estimated at a

hundred men and women)—if they could catch them. Twenty

of the worst ones were to be handed over to the Company,

evidently for exemplary punishment. The St. Thomas gov-

ernment pledged itself to furnish provisions for anywhere from



© S. P., St. Th. 1728-35. The first appeal to the Tortola authorities was made

by Gardelin in a letter to Markox at Spanishtown, dated November 29, 1738.

See Gardelin MSS. under that date.



© Om Rebellionen . . . March 16, 1734. Martfeldt MSS., Ill. The arrange-

ment seems to have been made on February 18. Cf. Gardelin MSS. (Febru-

ary 18, 1734).



51 Gardelin to Bewerhoudt (March 9, 1784). Gardein MSS.



8 Om Rebellionen . . . May 4, 1734. Martfeldt MSS., III.



174 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



tressed planters and Company it was the fact of assistance

and not its motives that mattered.



On the day following their arrival the French under their

commander Longueville were promptly dispatched to St. John.

The Danish governor lost no time in sending on planks for the

soldiers’ barracks and fresh meat for food. Crown attorney

Friis was ordered to St. John to take charge of the negroes as

they were captured. He was to try and judge half of those

caught and the others were to be sent to St. Thomas for trial.

The French commandant was to preside over the drumhead

court-martial when it should be called, but a Danish represen-

tative was to be present.” A force of twenty-five or thirty

Danes under Lieutenant Fréling was got together and sent

over to work in conjunction with the French.®



Within three or four days of their arrival the French forces

were encamped and ready for their grim labors. Only five

days before the arrival of the French on St. John, a party of

about forty rebels had made a fierce attack, lasting an hour and

a half, upon the burghers who were encamped on Deurloo’s

plantation. They managed to set the supply magazine on

fire, but suffered a loss of three killed and six badly wounded.”

From April 29 when they met their first party of rebels to May

27 when they returned to St. Thomas, the French force clung

tenaciously to the heels of their quarry until they were unable

to find the trace of a single live rebel. During the first three

weeks they had to march up hill and down dale, through bush

and bramble in an almost continual downpour of rain. By

working in shifts they completely wore out the energies of the

rebels, some of whom in lack of guns had armed themselves

with bows and arrows.” On May 9 they learned that the ne-

groes were assembled on a certain point or small peninsula of

land. The band escaped, but a wounded boy showed the



% Gardelin to “Commandeur Sergiant” Ottingen (April 28, 1784). Gar-

delin MSS.



5? Gardelin to Friis (April 24, 1784). Gardelin MSS.



 Gardelin to Friling (April 24, 1784). Ibid.



* Om Rebellionen . . . (May 4, 1734). Martfeldt MSS., III.



© Domme afeagt over Negere (May 21, 1784), B. & D., 1782-3§.



176 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



ment and the planters, each side trying to blame the other for

the uprising with a view to being relieved of part of the expense.

But the end of the rebellion was not quite at hand; for early in

August—two months after the French had left—the report

came in that a party of fourteen negroes and negresses, led by

one Prince “ was still at large, though without firearms. To

avoid an expensive “maroon hunt” Theodore Ottingen, an

officer who had taken part in the suppression of the rebellion

since its beginning, managed on promise of pardon to lure the

fifteen remaining rebels to their former owners’ plantations.

On the pretext that they would have to be appraised, every

one of them was seized at a given signal on the morning of

August 25 and brought to St. Thomas. Prince was not among

them, for he had—fortunately for himself—been beheaded, and

his head was a trophy in Ottingen’s baggage. Of these fifteen

rebels four “died” in prison before they could be brought to

trial, four were condemned to be worked to death on the St.

Croix fortifications, and the rest were done to death in various

ways “such as they deserved because of their gruesome deeds,”

as the official letter has it.”



With this piece of treachery, as it would be called in this age,

a success for which the responsible officer received high praise

from his superiors and a lieutenancy on St. Croix, the insurrec-

tion of 1788-1784 on St. John came to an end. Besides those

killed in conflict and those belonging to the Company, twenty-

seven negroes were estimated to have been tried and executed.”

A list made out in February, 1734, just before Maddox’s ill-

fated attempt, showed one hundred forty-six negro men and

women implicated in rebellion at that time. It is clear that the

story of the three hundred negroes found dead in a circle on a

mountain near “Brims Bay” is pure fancy. It was first told

by Hist ® whose account of the rebellion is based partly on



“ A negro belonging to Madame Elizabeth Runnels.



& See Gardelin’s instructions and letters to Ottingen in Gardelin MS8. (Au-

gust 9, 16, and 21, 1784.)



“ Om Rebellionen . . . December 28, 1784. Martfeldt MSS8., Vol. III.



67 Ibid.



6 Hast, Efterreininger, 96. A recent repetition of this story is to be found in

Keller, Colonization, p. 500.



178 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



humaneness. At any rate, it was a quarter of a century before

the Danish colonists were again seriously threatened with a

slave insurrection, and then it was on the new and rapidly de-

veloping island of St. Croix. The story of the attempted re-

bellion of 1759 belongs to the post-Company history of that

island.



180 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



When matters which especially affected the stockholders in

general came up, such as the need of securing additional funds

to enlarge the Company’s activities, the situation was presented

to the General Assembly of the Company, where each holder

of a full share of stock had one vote.? Serious problems con-

nected with the Company were sometimes referred by the king to

a special commission appointed (as was the case during the first

two decades of Christian V’s reign) from the membership of

the Board of Trade, or they were turned over (as was the case

from 1690 to 1705) to special bodies known from their place of

meeting as “‘Commissions in the Council Chamber of the Royal

Castle.” The majority of the members of such commissions

were usually officials of the Company.



In 1704, early in Frederick IV’s reign, the Board of Trade was

revived, and four years later it was combined with the Police

Board of Copenhagen into the Board of Police and Trade which

continued down to 1781. On at least two occasions, in 1715 and

in 1720, this body submitted to the king reports on petitions

from St. Thomas planters.’



The dimensions of Denmark’s commercial and colonial enter-

prises were never such as to permit the Board of Trade to

develop into a body which could be compared in its specialized

advisory functions to the Board of Trade and Plantations in

England. When William III founded the latter board in

1696, the greater number of the English colonies had already

passed out of the control of chartered companies. The active

control of the business of the Danish West India and Guinea

Company rested, as has been indicated, almost solely upon the

directors. They selected the governors and chief officials both

in Guinea and in St. Thomas, subject only to confirmation by

the king; they found captains for their trading vessels and pro-

vided ministers to care for the souls of employees, planters, and

slaves. The directors through their factor in Copenhagen were

expected to find a market either at home or abroad for African

ivory and West Indian sugar, cotton, and indigo.‘ They were



2 See above, p. 34.



3 See below, pp. 190-191. See also Appendiz F, pp. 306-314.

‘ Parts of the cargoes were usually offered at auction to local buyers.



182 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



position of the council, or privy council (Secrete-Raad), as it

came early to be called, until the reorganization of the Company

after the purchase of St. Croix. With the governorship of John

Lorentz the Company began the policy of procuring its adminis-

trators from officials who had had experience in actual service

in the Company’s government at St. Thomas. Lorentz himself

had begun as an assistant and was secretary and ez officio mem-

ber of the council when Heins’ death called him to the governor-

ship. His successor Claus Hansen had been lieutenant at the

fort and a council member. In fact, of the eight governors who

held office in St. Thomas from 1702, when Lorentz died, to 1733,

when Gardelin became governor, only two had not had their

preliminary training in St. Thomas. One of these, Otto J.

Thambsen, had been a commander (Schoutbynacht) in the

Danish navy; and the other, Henry Suhm, had been in charge

of Fort Christiansborg on the Guinea coast.’ Neither of these

men found his work congenial or was able to get on well with

the inhabitants of the colony.



The success of the Company as a commercial venture de-

pended very largely upon the ability and integrity of its West

Indian representatives. In order to procure those full return

cargoes on the advantageous sale of which the Company relied

mainly for its dividends, the West Indian government needed to

keep on good terms with the planters. Whenever a planter re-

ceived better offers from Dutch or other skippers than from the

Company, it became a difficult and delicate matter to force him

to part with his produce. Although in theory the Company’s

officials held all administrative, legislative, and judicial powers

in their own hands, they were obliged in practice to pay very

real heed to the desires of the islanders.



The relations between government and planters were affected

by a variety of circumstances. Too high duties or other annoy-

ing trade restrictions led the planters to attempts at evasion.

In this they were aided by the numerous indentations or “bays”

which made smuggling easy. Threats of shortage in provisions

through drought, hurricanes or other causes sometimes forced

the local government to take prompt measures for the relief of



1Cf. Appendiz A, p. 285.



184 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



On the death of Governor Hansen’s successor, Joachim von

Holten in 1708 the privy council actually called in twelve in-

habitants to assist them in electing a governor.'* The War of

the Spanish Succession, with the West Indies as the scene of

much of its sea-fighting, furnished a golden opportunity for

venturesome neutrals; and especially on St. Thomas had the

planters and traders become wealthy and influential through

dealing in captured ships and cargoes brought in by the priva-

teers of the warring nations.



The fact that the governor rarely succeeded in outliving his

term of office had resulted in giving the local officials and

planters their opportunity to take a hand in naming their chief

executive, at least until the directors could be heard from.

Governor Erik Bredal who succeded Michael Crone in 1716 in-

sisted so strongly on being relieved of his office that in Sep-

tember, 1728, the directors found themselves for the first time in

many years nominating and electing a governor.” The re-

cipient of this signal honor was Otto Jacob Thambsen, Com-

mander in the Royal Navy. He was awarded the unusually

large salary of 1200 rdl. per annum. On his arrival late in

April, 1724, he found the books in great confusion, the secre-

tary quite useless, customs duties uncollected for years back,

the council refractory, and the planters unwilling to do the

directors’ bidding.'* After ten weeks at St. Thomas he wrote

to his masters: ‘“‘ You must not suppose that because I do not

complain, I find it enjoyable here . . . I pray that the gentle-

men will not take it amiss if I remark that St. Thomas and my

office appear to me like the lion’s cave, where all the footprints

pointed in and from which none pointed out.” The directors

who often exhibited a painful obtuseness could hardly miss the

point, but before they could take any action, the sickness of the

incumbent appears to have compelled the privy and the com-

mon councils to elect a successor whom they found in Captain



12 Martfeldt MSS., Vol. VI, 1703-1709 (December 31, 1708).

13 See list of governors in Appendiz A.

16 Thambeen to Directors (May 16, 1724), B. & D., 1721-24; S. P. for St. Th.



(May 25, August 18, 1724).

18 [bid., (July 14, 1724), B. & D., 1781-24.



186 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



curred during the first week in April, the planters held a meet-

ing, appointed two of their number, Andrew Zinck and Anthony

Zytsema, to act as commissioners, and prepared for them an

elaborate set of instructions with the demands enumerated in

an imposing list of sixteen paragraphs. The instructions were

signed by sixty-nine planters of whom eight signed with their

marks. The signers included practically all the influential

planters.*?



A résumé of these demands will serve to show the sort of con-

ditions and regulations by which the planters of St. Thomas

felt themselves aggrieved. They began by urging an appeal

to the Danish government to bestir itself to secure the St.

Thomas vessels that had been seized by the French, English,

and Spanish during the war. A number of the planters owned

vessels with which they had carried on various kinds of trade,

both permitted and forbidden. The St. Thomas inhabitants

rightly felt that something might be gained if the home govern-

ment could secure exemption from seizure of vessels not carry-

ing contraband. But in such a titanic struggle, nothing but a

generous display of force could make the powers involved accede

to any request that Denmark might make, especially when it

touched upon their own interests. They desired, as St. Thomas

planters continued to desire for the next forty years, the return

of slaves that had escaped to Porto Rico. This presupposed

their expressed hope that Denmark might again come into

peaceful relations with Spain, something that was not likely to

be speedily brought about, since Denmark had not even had

an envoy at Madrid after the beginning of the Spanish Succes-

sion war.??



With respect to matters of local taxation they asked for the

revocation of the charges known as “‘sixth”’ and “tenth” taxes,

amounting to twenty-five per cent., which were laid upon the

property of persons leaving the island. These were especially



1 B. & D., 1706-10. The instructions are in Dutch and undated. The copy

in the Danish State Archives was apparently secured by the governor and sent

with his comment to the directors by the ship on which the commissioners

sailed.



33 Extr. af Gen. Brev fra St. Th., Punks 24 (April 8, 1706), C. B., 1690-1718.



188 THE DANISH WEST INDIES



privilege the directors tried to induce the planters to assist

the Company: in securing full return cargoes. But the Com-

pany’s policy of forbidding exports while any of its ships were

in the harbor was never popular among the planters. The

credit for achieving this wished for result was claimed by Direc-

tor Jacob Lerke in the letter in which he congratulated Governor

von Holten on his accession to office.” From this letter it ap-

pears that the “sixth” tax above mentioned was abolished by

the directors, likewise through Lerke’s efforts. The taxes on

imports and exports fixed by the governor and privy council as

a result of the directors’ orders were as follows: on goods leav-

ing St. Thomas, six per cent.; on incoming European goods,

four per cent.; on incoming West Indian goods, two per cent.;

on all provisions from New England, four per cent.”



The results of the planters’ mission of 1706 were on the whole

meager enough, yet in 1714-1715, when the planters felt their

situation again becoming desperate, they proceeded as before

to send a delegation to Copenhagen. The pressure of hard

times was already being felt in the West Indies; the home

country was fully occupied with the Northern War against

Sweden under Charles XII; in St. Thomas prizes and confis-

cated cargoes ceased being brought into the harbor. The

Spaniards on Porto Rico and the larger islands upon whom the

planters depended for cash were sufferimg severely, for it had

been more than two years since the Spanish fleet had visited

them.” What cash the planters were able to get hold of went

for provisions; they were concerned with keeping alive the

slaves they had, rather than with buying new ones.



When under these conditions the Company insisted on re-

taining the hated twenty-five per cent. tax on the property of

persons leaving the island, feeling among the planters ran high.

In numerous secret meetings the Company and its St. Thomas



7 B. & D., 1717-20, copy (November 5, 1707).



% The letter mentioned “de gepretendeerds 6% penning,'het welcke uyt de brief

kan gesien worden, is opgehoven,” which, if the copy be accurate, may possibly

refer to the sixth “penning” tax. But the tax seems to have remained in force

nevertheless.



™* Cop. og Extr., 8. P. for St. Th., 1699-171§ (April 2, 1708).



> B. & D., 171§-17 (August 10, 1714).






























































































































































































The Cruise of the Snark



By JACK LONDON



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