Virgin Islands
Virgin Islands
Virgin Islands, an archipelago of small islands and reefs between Puerto Rico and the Leeward Islands. The British Virgin Islands are a crown colony, while the American Virgin Islands—Saint Thomas, Saint Croix, and Saint John—have shared a common Danish history since the seventeenth century. In 1917, the United States acquired the islands to protect the Panama Canal. However, American and West Indian cultures conflict, adding to problems of race, local independence, rivalry between Saint Thomas and Saint Croix, and the tourist economy, a continuation of the Danish free port tradition.
Christopher Columbus discovered the Virgin Islands in 1493, and named them after Saint Ursula and her 10,000 fellow virgin martyrs. Despite Saint Thomas's harbor midway in the Caribbean, possible attack from Spaniards and Caribs discouraged colonization. Nevertheless, the Danish West India Company established a permanent settlement in 1672.
| U.S. Virgin Islands | |
|---|---|
| Population: | 108,448 (2007 est.) |
| Area: | 737 sq. mi |
| Languages: | English; Spanish; Spanish Creole; French; French Creole |
| National currency: | U.S. dollar |
| Principal religions: | Baptist 42%; Roman Catholic 34%; Episcopalian 17%; other 7% |
| Ethnicity: | Black 76%; white 13%; Asian 1%; other 6%; mixed-race 4% |
| Capital: | Charlotte Amalie |
| Annual rainfall: | Varies from 45-55 in on the northern coast and interior to 25-35 in in the south, southeastern, and coastal areas |
| Economy: | GDP per capita: US$14,500 (2004) |
Since the Danes were interested only in slave trading and customs receipts, the original Dutch trading and culture dominated. Capitalism broke down national barriers, and a mixed planter and merchant class developed that was hostile to the Danish metro-pole. Continuous Danish neutrality made Charlotte Amalie, the port of Saint Thomas, wealthy from auctioning war prizes and selling stores to buccaneers.
After U.S. purchase, the Supreme Court dashed islanders' citizenship hopes by defining the islands as an "unincorporated territory." Both the Navy Department and succeeding civilian governors failed to solve problems of race, local government, and a dependent economy even though the islands were a "laboratory of the New Deal."
During World War II, alien labor and economic dependency on government increased, and blacks and mulattoes filled local bureaucracies. After the war the Virgin Islands became dependent on permanent military facilities. Tourism started in the 1960s, becoming the latest in a string of boom/bust economies related to the islands' strategic location. A government and private-sector partnership built a tourism image for cruise ships and "shopping bag" tourism. In spite of labor inflow and low unemployment (0.23 percent), extensive moonlighting indicated a low-pay/inflation economy. As of 2007, tourism accounted for 80 percent of economic activity.
The three main islands have different geographies and societies. Saint John, once having one hundred sugar plantations, degenerated rapidly after a ferocious slave rebellion in 1733, and has a small population and little influence. Saint Thomas's commercial and cosmopolitan tradition has been augmented by consecutive immigrants: "Cha-Chas" from nearby Saint Barthélemy, laborers from Puerto Rico and the other Antilles, and U.S. "Continentals." Saint Croix, bought from France in 1733, has been dominated by Danish sugar planters. By 1954, 40 percent of the island was still owned by twelve families and one foreign corporation. The rivalry between the commercial and planter oligarchies of Saint Thomas and Saint Croix carried over into the relations with the new black middle-class elite.
See alsoCaribbean Antilles; United States-Latin American Relations.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hendrik De Leeuw, Crossroads of the Buccaneers (1937).
Gordon K. Lewis, The Virgin Islands: A Caribbean Lilliput (1972).
Additional Bibliography
Dookhan, Isaac. A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States. Kingston, Jamaica: Canoe Press, 1994.
Edmond Konrad