The Virgin Islands: A History
This sweeping history of the Virgin Islands traces the archipelago's story from its earliest Indigenous inhabitants to its place in the modern Caribbean. Across St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix, Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada, Vieques, Culebra, and the many surrounding islets and cays, the book explores how geography, empire, trade, slavery, resistance, and culture shaped a region united by the sea yet divided by colonial borders.
Beginning with the Ciboney, Ta no, and Kalinago peoples, the narrative follows the dramatic transformation brought by European arrival, Spanish claims, privateers, pirates, Dutch settlers, Danish colonizers, and British expansion. It examines how the islands became prizes in a wider imperial struggle, valued for their harbors, trade routes, plantation lands, and strategic position at the edge of the Caribbean.
At the center of the book is the rise of the sugar economy and the brutal system of slavery that sustained it. The plantation world of the Danish, British, and Spanish Virgin Islands is presented alongside the lives, labor, suffering, cultural survival, and resistance of enslaved Africans and their descendants. Major turning points such as the 1733 St. John insurrection, the work of Moravian missionaries, emancipation, and the post-slavery struggle for economic and social adjustment receive careful attention.
The book also follows the islands into the modern era, including the decline of sugar, the sale of the Danish West Indies to the United States in 1917, the development of the British Virgin Islands' autonomy, the U.S. Navy's long presence on Vieques, and the rise of tourism as a defining force. It explores how each territory developed politically and economically while maintaining shared cultural roots shaped by African, European, and Caribbean influences.
Rich in historical scope, this volume offers a broad and accessible account of the Virgin Islands' complex past and uncertain future. From ancient settlements and colonial rivalry to freedom struggles, cultural identity, environmental challenges, and modern tourism, it presents the Virgin Islands not simply as a tropical paradise, but as a deeply layered archipelago with a powerful and enduring story.
Customer Reviews
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
