Company Rule in the Danish West Indies

Early Mercantilist Charter Companies Administer Denmark's Colonies

Jul 16, 2009

Denmark, along with many other European nations during the 17th and 18th century, worked with regaled charter companies to operate their Caribbean colonies.

Denmark, along with Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands “did not work through a direct governmental agency,” such as was the goal of Portugal or Spain, but ventured out, almost surreptitiously, through regaled charted companies to amass their colonial fortunes. The Danes had established stations at Tranquebar in India as early as 1616, under the Danish East India Company and the direct stewardship of King Christian IV. These early ventures, although, were directed by two Dutchmen, who had both the knowledge, manner, and capital to promote such a venture in the name of Denmark. Denmark therefore, sought the Netherlands to motivate their nationalistic impulses for colonial fortune, which they, as a lesser but no less capable European power, were inclined to secure under the direct rule of Christian IV.

The Beginning of the Danish West India Company

The Danish West India Company in the Virgin Islands began rather unevenly in the late 17th century under the auspices and the direction of the Dutch example once more, but in the Caribbean. Commercially, the Danish West India Company was a series of joint-stock companies which promoted their trade together in secured merchant vessels, outbound and inbound from the West Indies. The Company claimed the Virgin Islands, initially with St. Thomas, in the name of Denmark but in the interests of stake-holding a viable commercial center. Their interest was primarily to raise their capital gain from trade and plantation agriculture. The men and woman needed to sustain this agriculture became more or less the inhabitants of the Virgin Islands.

St. Thomas under Company Rule

The Company founded in 1671 received royal charter from the absolutist monarchy under Christian V, to which was directed by the Danish Board of Trade. This charter authorized the company to take direct control of the island of St. Thomas, and in the process develop infrastructure in the way of lodgings and forts for the occupants. This in effect allowed the Company great powers in directly handling all matters and affairs concerning the island. All manners of law and ordinance were to be handled by representative company governors and finally the Company itself, with respect to most of the proper customs of Denmark.

The Company appointed directors in addition to the directors appointed by the Board of Trade. These directors had, of course, a major investment in the stock of the Company. The Company, though guided by direct rule, was nonetheless inclined to give in to the demands of the colonists, who were otherwise the engine, with slave labor as the cog, behind the system of plantation agriculture in the West Indies. These demands were usually for fairer trade practices and a lessening of the monopoly created by the Company which lessened the value of their goods or decreased competition for fairer prices, and they were usually met with considerable acknowledgment by the Company. The creation of the Burgher Council is a successful example of this type of acknowledgment by the Company’s directors. Here local planters expressed their grievances through a type of small court or arbitration. This soon, though, proved unsatisfactory and the greater faction of planters began to organize more effectively and sent delegates to Denmark to seek more thorough representation of their interests.

The End of Company Rule

For nearly one hundred years the Danish West India Company controlled St. Thomas, and in the process acquired the islands of St. John and St. Croix. In 1754, the Board of Trade finally called for the Company’s dissolution and the Company was handed over to the Crown. After the transfer to the Crown, the most improved difference was in some monopolistic trade regulations which were relaxed in respect to competing interests in the West Indies. The Crown, of course, did not want to stand to lose economic viability in an already fragile economy secured by a strategic positioning of wartime neutrality, and thus deregulation was still not at all different from the operating monopoly system of Company rule, for both were invariably tied to upholding the general belief in mercantilist principles. The ordinance of April 6th, 1764, briefly relaxed and actually seemed to extend, according to Caribbean historian Isaac Dookhan, mercantilist theories. The Crown’s control of the West Indies merely updated the form of colonial rule enacted by the Company by further securing diplomatic ties with fledgling nations such as the United States and with other European powers before and during the upheaval of the Napoleonic revolution.

Dookhan,Isaac. A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States. 3rd ed. Kingston, Jamaica: Canoe Press, 1994.

Lauring, Paulle. A History of the Kingdom of Denmark. Translated by David Hohnen. Høst & Søn: Copenhagen. 1960.

Nørregård, Georg. Danish Settlements in West Africa 1658–1850. Translated by Sigurd Mammen. Boston University Press: Boston. 1962.

Westergaard,Waldemar. The Danish West Indies under Company Rule (1671-1754): with a supplementary chapter, 1755-1917. Facsim. of: 1917 ed. New York: Macmilllan, 1917. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1973.

The copyright of the article Company Rule in the Danish West Indies in Scandinavian History is owned by Adam C'DeBaca. Permission to republish Company Rule in the Danish West Indies in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.