Christopher Columbus and his crew landed at Salt River Bay, St. Croix, in 1493. The islands he referred to as Las Islas Virgenes, after St. Ursula and Her Thousand Virgins, a historical myth engrained in the early Catholic canon of saints, were a scattered group of three small, hilly islands: St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John. Their position places them in direct route southward from Western Europe following the generous tradewinds which carry sailors through and onward to the rest of the Leeward Islands. It is from that long passage from the Guadalquivir in Seville, Spain, and along the outlying islands off the western coast of Africa that Columbus found himself in the Virgin Islands.
Small Islands in the New World
Their naturally hilly, mountainous nature and relatively small size, somewhere combined to one hundred and thirty square miles, were in effect not large or attractive enough agriculturally for the Spanish to concentrate their efforts on in colonizing; for the Spanish lay their interests in the rich South American and Mexican dominions as well as much larger islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola. During this period between the end of the 15th century to the beginning of the 17th century, the Spanish dominated the entire New World, along with her crown-ordained neighbor Portugal, who also controlled the very profitable eastern trade route to India.
The Spanish Empire
The two countries merged under one crown in 1580, with the death of Sebastian I and the succession of Phillip II, and thus became a powerful world empire acquiring Brazil, a great part of Africa, and the entire East Indies. This powerful Habsburg dynasty would have added the insignificant Virgin Islands as another tally to an already commanding empire of world possessions. During this period, the Virgin Islands were only significant as infrequent outposts to safe harbor weary Spanish sailors on their route to the rest of the Americas. The natural harbor of Charlotte Amalie in St. Thomas or Christiansted, St. Croix, would have been a mere, convenient resting points to the larger fortunes and larger harbors in Cuba, Santo Domingo, or Jamaica (Santiago).
European Powers Fight for Control of the Virgin Islands
After the monopoly of Spanish colonial power assumedly began to come to an end the 17th century, the English and Dutch naval power began to lay claim to a number of Caribbean islands such as Bermuda, St. Kitts, and Barbados. The English and Dutch jointly controlled the Island of St. Croix in 1625 until it was bought by the French, the last of the major European powers to claim control and ownership of the various small islands in the Caribbean archipelago, who altogether abandoned the aforementioned colony a long while before it was purchased by the Danish in 1733.
St. Croix
From about 1690 to this time, though, there had been operating of upwards to 90 mills and an uneven supply of cotton and tobacco in St. Croix. This period also saw many small Spanish repossessions of the claimed islands, culminating in small engagements of land and naval warfare, to which French and English efforts briefly allied in a series of planned attacks to oust the previous occupants. St. Croix, therefore, has had the longest history of attempted colonization, accordingly due to its larger size and suitable amount of land available for cultivation, but the dissension of European powers in the Caribbean and natural factors such as weather and tropical diseases prevented the more prosperous advantages of the sugar trade enjoyed by Denmark until the late 18th and early 19th century.
Sources:
Dookhan,Isaac. A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States. 3rd ed. Kingston, Jamaica: Canoe Press, 1994.
Lauring, Paulle. A History of the Kingdom of Denmark. Translated by David Hohnen. Høst & Søn: Copenhagen. 1960.
Nørregård, Georg. Danish Settlements in West Africa 1658–1850. Translated by Sigurd Mammen. Boston University Press: Boston. 1962.
Westergaard,Waldemar. The Danish West Indies under Company Rule (1671-1754): with a supplementary chapter, 1755-1917. Facsim. of: 1917 ed. New York: Macmilllan, 1917. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1973.
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