Danish West Indies

The Danish West Indies (Danish: Dansk Vestindien) or Danish Virgin Islands (Danish: Danske Jomfruøer) or Danish Antilles were a Danish colony in the Caribbean, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas with 32 square miles (83 km²); Saint John (Danish: St. Jan) with 19 square miles (49 km²); and Saint Croix with 84 square miles (220 km²). The islands have belonged to the United States as the Virgin Islands since they were purchased in 1917. Water Island was part of the Danish West Indies until 1905, when the Danish state sold it to the East Asiatic Company, a private shipping company.

The Danish West India-Guinea Company annexed uninhabited St. Thomas in 1672; annexed St. John in 1718; and bought St. Croix from France (King Louis XV) on June 28, 1733. When the Danish West India-Guinea Company went bankrupt in 1754, King Frederik V of Denmark–Norway assumed direct control of the three islands. Britain occupied the Danish West Indies in 1801–1802 and 1807–1815 during the Napoleonic Wars.

Danish colonizers in the West Indies aimed to exploit the profitable triangular trade, involving the export of firearms and other manufactured goods to Africa in exchange for slaves, who were then transported to the Caribbean to work the sugar plantations. Caribbean colonies, in turn, exported sugar, rum and molasses to Denmark. The economy of the Danish West Indies depended on slavery. After a rebellion, slavery was officially abolished in 1848, leading to the near economic collapse of the plantations.

In 1852, the Danish parliament first debated the sale of the increasingly unprofitable colony. Denmark tried several times to sell or exchange the Danish West Indies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: to the United States and to the German Empire, respectively. The islands were eventually sold to the United States for $25 million (equivalent to $594,550,000 in 2023) which took over the administration on 31 March 1917 and renamed the territory the United States Virgin Islands.