Islands of Regret: Restitution, Connected Memories and the Politics of History in Denmark and the US Virgin Islands

The dissertation takes as its starting point the demands of a public Danish apology that were claimed in 1998 in connection to the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the enslaved Africans in the former Danish West Indies (today’s US Virgin Islands). In the years to come, different groups of Virgin Islanders claimed reparations several times. The demands were initially rejected by the Danish government and succeeding Danish governments have continued to reject any discussion on the matter. With the claims for amends as the spine of the dissertation, I have investigated why the claims surfaced in 1998 – 150 years after the official abolition of slavery and 81 years after the transfer of the colony to the USA. I have approached these questions through a study of the narratives in which the story of Denmark as a colonial power have been shaped both in Denmark but also in the US Virgin Islands.
The ambition of this dissertation is to place this case within the larger field of international discussions on how to come to terms with past atrocities. In recent years these discussions have led to public apologies and reparations as well as other forms of symbolic compensation. In the research literature, the field goes under the name of politics of regret. A number of leading experts in the field explain this phenomenon with the emergence of a new moral norm with increasing importance to international politics. Following this norm, the legitimate state is no longer only defined as a state building on democracy and human rights, but in turn a state able to deal with or even repent former atrocities committed by the state or groups within it. Denmark normally follows internationally recognized criteria and standards of legitimacy closely. However, in this case the state seems to stray from the larger pattern. The question is why this is the case. I found the answer to this question in a study of the public memories and discussions on the past in common – both in Denmark and also in the US Virgin Islands.
The dissertation has 3 parts. After an initial exposition of the historical and theoretical context of the case and definition of the key term social memories, I pose the question in Part 1 as to why the colonial history of Denmark has been marginalised from public narratives of Danish history and why this past has resurfaced in recent years. In chapter 1, I focus on the period in which the narratives still guiding public conceptions of the past in Denmark were created in the 19th century. I focus in particular on the regime change from absolute monarchy to popular sovereignty in 1849 that necessitated a new foundational narrative legitimising the new state. This period in turn is one in which larger parts of the Danish realm were either lost or sold. This shrinkage of the empire had direct consequences to the new narrative. Instead of focusing on the realm at large, the emphasis was narrowly on the Danish nation with a heavy focus on language and culture. Thereby the histories of the colonies were marginalised. In this chapter, I also discuss the importance of returning colonial civil servants to the formation of public memories and the absence of direct violence in the phase-out of the Danish tropic colonies.
Neither public narratives nor social memories are stable. This is why I in chapter 2 study the transformations of the memories of Denmark as a colonial power – both in Denmark and the US Virgin Islands. In this study I focus specifically on the celebration of round number anniversaries of two memorial dates of special importance to these memories and how they unfolded in 1948, 1967, 1992 and 1998. This period is simultaneously the period in which the global decolonization process takes off and the responsibilities for the atrocities during the Second World War are discussed internationally – discussions that in turn have consequences for the formation of memories of Denmark and its colonies.
The ambition with the Second Part of the dissertation is to place the demands for reparations within its broader political context. That is, both in terms of the discussion on the past that currently take place in the US Virgin Islands and which involve highly different groups of actors as well as how these discussions unfolded in the US in particular and the Caribbean region more broadly. In this part, I argue that the claims for reparations should be understood as part of the process of creating a foundational political narrative in the territory; a project that has both proved extremely complicated and also, by necessity, involves Denmark. In chapter 3, I focus on the NGO that most persistently has claimed reparations from Denmark and the theories and political analysis that motivate these claims. Moreover, I insert the claims in the much longer history of how the question of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow policies has been debated in the US.
In Part 3, I return to Denmark in order to study the official Danish rejection of the claims and the reasons behind this rejection. In chapter 5, I briefly outline two other cases of historical injustices that Denmark has amended. Moreover, I demonstrate that the diplomatic relations to the US and other EU member states have had decisive impact on the Danish position. In chapter 6, I discuss the official Danish reactions in light of the existing theoretical literature on the field. Finally I give an estimation of how the claims in 1998 and the discussions it entailed have impacted public conceptions of the colonial past in Denmark.