ABSTRACT

This article examines conceptions of sovereignty in the Danish Caribbean colony of St. Thomas between 1672 and 1680. It focuses on the colony’s first governor, Jørgen Iversen, and his struggles to govern the colony on behalf of Denmark’s absolutist monarchy and the Danish West India and Guinea Company. Using insights from recent studies of sovereignty and power in colonial societies, the article explores how Iversen organized the colony’s legal system as a means of creating legitimate rule and as a way of transferring the sovereignty of the Danish monarch across the Atlantic. By demonstrating that colonization was a profoundly political project, the article challenges existing historiographical interpretations of early colonial rule that have mainly focused on the economics of Danish Atlantic expansion and the allegedly chaotic and unruly nature of St. Thomas’s colonial society. More generally, the article provides new insights into the study of sovereignty and authority in the formation of Caribbean colonial societies.

摘要

本文考察了 1672 年至 1680 年丹麦加勒比殖民地圣托马斯的主权概念。重点关注该殖民地的第一任总督约尔根·艾弗森（Jørgen Iversen），以及他代表丹麦专制君主制和丹麦西印度群岛治理该殖民地的斗争。几内亚公司。文章利用最近对殖民社会主权和权力的研究的见解，探讨了艾弗森如何组织殖民地的法律体系，以此作为建立合法统治的手段以及将丹麦君主的主权转移到大西洋彼岸的一种方式。通过证明殖民化是一个深刻的政治项目，这篇文章挑战了对早期殖民统治的现有史学解释，这些解释主要集中在丹麦大西洋扩张的经济学和圣托马斯殖民社会据称的混乱和不守规矩的性质上。更一般地说，本文为研究加勒比殖民社会形成中的主权和权威提供了新的见解。