Articles

The Cruz Bay Battery, St. Jan, Danish West Indies, c1852 
(Lithograph print by Bærentzen & Co., from a painting by Fritz Melbye)

Excerpts

Whet your appetite for Caribbean history with these tidbits.

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The Sons of the Sea Beggars & the Daughters of Eden

Throughout the 1600s, most new arrivals to the Caribbean emanated from the old world’s long-oppressed peasant and laboring classes. Among them were prisoners of war, ...
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A True Account of Piracy and Buried Treasure in the Virgin Islands As recounted by William Blackstock aboard the HMS Christian at sea, November 26, 1750

A story of piracy and buried treasure as accounted by William Blackstock aboard the HMS Christian in November of 1750.
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A New Vernacular: Cruz Bay’s Historic Post-Transfer Architecture

Although only a few examples of classic Danish Colonial architecture can be found in Cruz Bay, there is certainly no shortage of notable historical buildings ...
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Danish Crown Surveyor Julius P. B. von Rohr and the Founding of the Town of Cruz Bay on St. John

In the early hours of Monday, November 23, 1733, a well-planned insurrection carried out by a determined group of enslaved Africans interrupted Danish-colonial rule on ...
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Envisioning St. John’s North-Central Coast at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

While the roughly three-mile stretch of St. John’s North Shore between Mary’s Point and Leiven Marche’s Bay appears remote and unspoiled today, back at the ...
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A Brief Timeline of the Danish Settlement of St. John

The following is a highly condensed contextual timeline of the first seventeen years of Danish-colonial settlement on St. John, from the island's formal occupation in ...
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