Danish Defense of St. Croix

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Military Sites Archaeology in the Caribbean: Studies of Colonialism, Globalization, and Multicultural Communities" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Although often left out of mainstream narratives of European expansion and empire, the Scandinavian nation of Denmark was an active agent of colonialism from the seventeenth to the twentieth century with possessions in the Caribbean, the African continent, and beyond. Part and parcel with Danish colonial expansion was the construction and armament of military structures to serve as defensive strongholds, trading posts, and more. And even as Denmark has relinquished or granted autonomy to their former colonial possessions, the remnants of their defense of these lands remain. This paper presents the initial results of an ongoing project examining the changing nature of military defense on and of the former Danish West Indian island of St. Croix. The project combines archaeological, archival, and spatial analyses to better understand not only diachronic and spatial trends at the island level, but also how defense played out on the ground under Danish colonial rule.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Military Sites Archaeology in the Caribbean: Studies of Colonialism, Globalization, and Multicultural Communities   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

Keywords

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 413