Danish slavery and colonialism discussed at Virgin Islands Workshop

PRESS RELEASE

GOVERNMENT OF THE U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS 

DEPARTMENT OF PLANNING AND NATURAL RESOURCES 

 The Scandinavian Atlantic and the Caribbean Exchanges Workshop at the Charles W. Turnbull Regional Library Commissioner Dawn L. Henry, Esq. is pleased to announce that the Charles W. Turnbull Regional Library is the host venue for The Scandinavian Atlantic and the Caribbean Exchanges Workshop to be held on November 10th and 11th, 2015.

The extensive two-day workshop is organized by the research network GlobArch (www.globarch.org) and financed by Riksbankens jubileumsfond of Sweden. The free workshops will highlight the important role that the Caribbean played in the triangular slave trade that was tightly entangled with the rest of the world as with other Atlantic regions such as the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast in Africa and North-Western Europe. 

Caribbean Islands created a physical space of human displacement and constant movement of goods, ideologies and ideas. Scandinavians were active participants in these exchanges. Sweden and Denmark made repeated colonial claims throughout Africa, America and the Caribbean. 

The workshop agenda follows: 

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10th 

9:00-9:15 Introduction Magdalena Naum & Jonas M. Nordin 9:15–10:00 

Contact, Colonialism, and other Tropes in the Archaeology of Atlantic Africa Christopher R. DeCorse (Syracuse University) 10:00–10:45 

Awkward Encounters. The reconstruction of a former Danish plantation in Ghana Nathalia Sofie Brichet(Copenhagen University) 10:45–11:30 

Framing the Texts of Two African Christians: Sites of Encounter in the Scandinavian Atlantic and in Atlantic Africa in the Eighteenth Century. Ray A. Kea (University of California at Riverside): 12:45–1:30 

Johan Lorentz Carstens and the strategy of leaving a Caribbean colony Louise Sebro (Danish National Museum) 1:30–2:15 

Danish Colonial Healthcare Policy and Afro-Caribbean Healing Practices, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands Meredith Reifschneider (Stanford University) 2:15–3:30 

Colonialism in the Danish West Indies and in Relation to the Caribbean Douglas Armstrong: 3:30–4:30 Discussion (moderator Neil Price) 

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11 

9:15–10:00 Swedish Iron and Africans in the Age of Atlantic Slavery Chris Evans (University of South Wales) 10:00–10:45 

Metals in the Danish Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Commodities Brought from Copenhagen, 1700-1754 Göran Rydén(Uppsala University): 10:45–11:30 

War and Trade in Gustavia, 1793-1815 Victor Wilson(Åbo Akademi University) 12:45–1:30 First Attempts in the Danish West Indies: Slave Law and Slave Trials During Company Rule from 1670s to 1730s Gunvor Simonsen (Copenhagen University) 1:30–2:15 

Creo[law]zation. A Caribbean Legal Archipelago Around the Year 1800 Fredrik Thomasson (Uppsala University) 2:15–3:15 Discussion (moderator Neil Price) 

For more information, please contact Ingrid Bough, Director of Libraries, Archives and Museums at 773-5715 or Sean Krigger, Director of the Virgin Islands State Historic Preservation Office at 776-8605 or the Charles W. Turnbull Regional Library at 774-0630. To read more information about the Scandinavian Workshops visit www.virginislandspubliclibraries.org