Virgin Islands
Virgin Islands historical timeline
History
Origins
The islands were settled by Ciboney, Arawak and then Kalinago peoples long before Christopher Columbus sighted them in 1493 and named them for St. Ursula's eleven thousand virgins. The Reef Bay petroglyphs on St. John are the clearest surviving trace of that period; the indigenous population itself did not survive European contact.
Turning points
Denmark took St. Thomas in 1672, St. John in 1718 and bought St. Croix from France in 1733, running all three as sugar colonies worked by enslaved Africans. The 1733 St. John slave revolt held the island for six months and is one of the earliest sustained slave uprisings in the Americas. In 1848, a mass march on Frederiksted led by General Buddhoe forced the Danish governor to declare emancipation on the spot, ahead of any order from Copenhagen.
The United States bought the islands in 1917 for $25 million in gold, to stop Germany acquiring a submarine base in the Caribbean during the First World War. Residents were granted US citizenship in 1927. In 1956 Laurance Rockefeller donated the land that became Virgin Islands National Park.
Influential people
Buddhoe — Moses Gottlieb — forced emancipation in 1848 and was deported for it. Queen Mary Thomas led the 1878 Fireburn labour revolt on St. Croix, still commemorated here. Alexander Hamilton spent his youth in Christiansted and left for New York on money raised by the town.
Cultural evolution
What emerged is neither Danish nor American but Virgin Islander: English-based Creole, quelbe music played on handmade instruments, a Carnival tradition, and a food culture drawn from West Africa by way of the plantations. The American century added the dollar, the passport-free arrival and the cruise economy without displacing any of it.
Present-day significance
The territory's unresolved political status — US citizens who pay federal payroll taxes, serve in the military, and cannot vote for the president — is a live local argument rather than a historical footnote. So is the recovery from 2017, when Hurricanes Irma and Maria, both Category 5, struck two weeks apart. Much has been rebuilt; some has not.