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On this day, 2 July 1848, enslaved people in St Croix (now the US Virgin Islands) rebelled, burned down plantations and besieged the town of Frederiksted. The Caribbean island was at that time a Danish colony, and it had been decreed that slavery would be abolished in 1859, but the enslaved workers refused to wait.
After revolutions in Europe led to turmoil in nearby Martinique and Guadeloupe, hundreds of rebels seized the moment and rose up. By the end of the day, only the local military garrison, Fort Frederiksværn, had not yet been overrun.
The following day, the governor general, Peter von Scholten arrived. Faced with demands from the enslaved people to immediately abolish slavery, or they would burn the town to the ground, he relented and shouted out: “Now you are free, you are hereby emancipated.”
Technically von Scholten had no authority to abolish slavery, and he was strongly criticised by enslavers and Danish authorities. But faced with a fait accompli, Denmark had no real choice but to accept the situation. The agreement achieved by the formerly enslaved people went even further than just immediate emancipation, as the order issued on the night of July 3 also applied to the Danish colonies of St Thomas and St John, and directed that the enslaved had the right to keep their current housing and provisions for three months, and that elderly and ill labourers had to be looked after by the former enslavers “until further determination”.
The old enslavers subsequently sued the Danish government demanding recompense for the loss of their “property”. Danish Parliament rejected their claim, on the grounds that “slavery [was] itself an institution in conflict with religion and justice”. But they did then agreed to pay a relatively low compensation figure of $50 per enslaved person.
Pictured: Freedom statue in St Thomas commemorating 150 years since emancipation. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1751869231664886/?type=3
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