GIS modeling and analysis of multispectral satellite imagery are applied to a former plantation in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), which, in 1831, became a settlement of free Africans who lived within slavery-based British colonialism. A map of the settlement represents the paternalist British government ideal for this community—an “experiment” for controlling a postemancipation peasantry—and the techniques discussed here allow clearer understanding of the way these ideals would have interacted with the physical and social landscape of the BVI had they been implemented. The residents were certainly aware of their situation, and this study does not mean to imply that they simply adopted the plan they were handed. Instead, our goal is to interrogate the implications of the plan itself. We combine least cost path (LCP), Normalized Difference Vegetation Indexes (NDVI), and other technical analyses to show the interaction of the British plan and the BVI landscape in order to describe the context in which the Kingstown community was built and maintained. Although schematic, this study quantifies at least some of the barriers the community overcame and contributes in a limited way to broader considerations of the place of land and landscape in structures of colonialism.

多光谱卫星图像的 GIS 建模和分析应用于英属维尔京群岛 (BVI) 的前种植园，该种植园于 1831 年成为生活在以奴隶制为基础的英国殖民主义中的自由非洲人的聚居地。定居点的地图代表了家长式英国政府对这个社区的理想——控制解放后农民的“实验”——这里讨论的技术可以让人们更清楚地了解这些理想与英属维尔京群岛的自然和社会景观相互作用的方式如果他们被实施。居民们当然知道他们的情况，这项研究并不意味着他们只是简单地接受了他们收到的计划。相反，我们的目标是询问计划本身的含义。我们结合了最低成本路径（LCP），标准化差异植被指数 (NDVI) 和其他技术分析，以显示英国计划与英属维尔京群岛景观的相互作用，以描述金斯敦社区的建造和维护环境。尽管是示意性的，但这项研究至少量化了社区克服的一些障碍，并以有限的方式对更广泛的考虑土地和景观在殖民主义结构中的位置做出了贡献。