The Bridge Volume 38 Number 2 Article 7 2015 Traveling the Distance: Danish “Empire Migration” to the U.S. Virgin Islands Pernille Østergaard Hansen Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thebridge Part of the European History Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, and the Regional Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Hansen, Pernille Østergaard (2015) "Traveling the Distance: Danish “Empire Migration” to the U.S. Virgin Islands," The Bridge: Vol. 38 : No. 2 , Article 7. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thebridge/vol38/iss2/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Bridge by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. Traveling the Distance: Danish “Empire Migration” to the U.S. Virgin Islands by Pernille Østergaard Hansen In 1917, Denmark sold its Caribbean colonies—known at the time as the Danish West Indies—to the United States and thus made its fi nal, offi cial break with the islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John. The transfer of the islands to the United States involved a juxtaposition of both rupture and continuity, however. Although the year 1917 marked a signifi cant decline in Danish colonial rule, “new imperial” ideas and practices continued without interruption. Moreover, the transfer did not break Danish ties to the former colony. Several Danes stayed on and continued their island lives, while other Danes chose to migrate to islands aft er 1917.1 In common for all of these was the general feeling among Danes that there was a bond between Denmark and the islands, that they were somehow connected.