The St. John Slave Revolt of 1733
A Bloody Portent to Emancipation in the Virgin Islands
St. John is an isolated, mountainous island; its plantation system sufficed as a remote satellite for Denmark’s West Indian sugarcane industry, adjacent to its neighbor St. Thomas, and fifty miles north from the larger island of St. Croix. In 1733, St. John was “unevenly” inhabited by an expanding planter population, having been acquired by the Danish West India Company in 1718. These planters were of Dutch, French and Danish descent, occupying the region under Company consent and an eight-year non-tax provision. The slave population, who were the base of the dependent agricultural system, consisted of primarily Ghanaian captives from the Guinea Gold Coast, whose transport through the lucrative slave trade to St. Thomas was carried out by the enterprising Danish Company charters, who held a royal monopoly, and other neutral private traders.
Slave Mandates Under Danish West India Company
In 1733, Governor Philip Gardelin issued a series of repressive slave mandates. These mandates, in themselves, were unmerciful and undeniably cruel. They were meant to intimidate the slave population into submissiveness and coercion, and to prevent any possible acts of sabotage or insurrection. Virgin Islands historian Isaac Dookhan writes that "slaves found guilty of conspiracy were to lose a leg each unless their owners requested a leniency when the sentence could be reduced to 150 lashes and the loss of the slaves' ears. Slaves who failed to report a plot of which they were aware were to be branded on the forehead and, in addition, were to receive one hundred lashes." (155) The fear of the planters, and the excessive violence attached to these laws, was a matter of ratio, for as of 1720 the slave population was nearly eight-to-one to that of the European planters. Isaac Dookhan cites a census in 1733 that records 1,087 blacks to the mere 208 whites occupying St. John. (166)
The summer of 1733 before the revolt was aggravated by a drought and subsequent hurricanes, among which fostered an insect scourge, according to records attained from Danish-American historian Waldemar Westegaard. This, along with the repressive system of laws enforced, roused the slaves to revolt. The rebellion was to be carried out on Christmas day, 1733, but a planned future visit from Governor Gardelin in November set back the date to coincide with the governor’s arrival.
Coral Bay Fort and Cinnamon Bay
The date of the insurrection, historically, begins on November 23, supposedly at 3 a.m., when a group of more than a dozen slaves bringing firewood to the Danish fort at Coral Bay hid “canebills” and knives in the wood, and slaughtered almost all of the soldiers of the weakly-garrisoned fort. The only surviving soldier, Jan Gabriel, escaped to St. Thomas to break news of the massacre.
It was revealed later that the revolt was orchestrated by two “bombas” or slave drivers, one who is known as “Kanta.” According to sources, the El Mina population of Ghanaian slaves was a factor in the insurrection, reportedly due to their resistant and warrior-bound temperament. Other sources cite the population of Akwamu as leaders of the rebellion.
Upon taking the fort at Coral Bay, the rebels continued on a pillaging drive through the plantations, brandishing firearms and cutlasses and murdering many whites, and sparing a few, such as the surgeon Dr. Cornelius Bödger, before encountering resistance at Klein Caneel Bay or Cinnamon Bay, under 40 whites and 25 “faithful” slaves.
European Reinforcement from St. Kitts and Martinique
After two months of guerilla warfare, where reinforcements were sent such as the Free Negro Corps, the British, under a man-of-war near Tortola and other volunteers stationed in St. Kitts, were called in February, 1734, but were repelled when British soldiers sent into the island’s dense tropics to search for the rebels were ambushed and killed. Governor Gardelin asked then for assistance from the French governor of Martinique (an obliging act of diplomacy following the purchase of St. Croix) who sent a commandment of 228 soldiers to round up the surviving rebels. The French succeeded in dissipating the insurrection; from April to May over fifty rebels were killed or found dead by suicide. Finally, in August, fourteen rebels led by the Akwamu “Prince” were steered into surrender by the Danish officer Didrik Øettingen and promptly executed.
Treatment of Slaves after Revolt
The end of the rebellion amounted to more resistant measures for the governors of the surrounding territories. The plantation owners, out of the calumny, became more cautious and wary, but as a consequence, and a fear of retaliation, initiated more “humane” treatment towards the slave population, which had in its more lasting effects the beginning of a long-standing conversion of the population to Christianity by the Moravian church.
Sources:
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.
Executions were by beheading, and gibbeting.
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Sanct Jan, Vestindiske, 1780 (Danish map)
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