Denmark and the slave trade

Prohibition of Danish Slave Trade

Painting of Fredrik VI

The edict was issued in the name of his father King Christian VII by Fredrik VI (who was then Regent because of his father's mental illness) on 16 March 1792 and came into effect on 1 January 1803. Denmark thus bears the honor of being the first established sovereign state to prohibit the slave trade (but not slavery: that honor rests with Vermont, which abolished slavery in 1777).

Further Information

The following are useful accounts.

NAT Hall, Slave Society in the Danish West Indies: St Thomas, St John, and St Croix, Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic history and Culture, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1992.

AR Highfield and GF Tyson (ed), The Danish West Indian Slave Trade: Virgin Islands Perspectives, St Croix, VI, Virgin Islands Humanities Council, 1994.

AR Highfield and GF Tyson (ed), Slavery in the Danish West Indies: A Bibliography, St Croix, The Virgin Islands Humanities Council, 1994.

KF Olwig, Cultural Adaptation and Resistance on St John: Three Centuries of Afro-Caribbean Life, Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 1985.

I Paiewonsky, Eyewitness Accounts of Slavery in the Danish West Indies, St Thomas, VI, USA, I. Paiewonsky, 1987.

Links to pages dealing with the abolition of slavery in the Danish West Indies:

Peter Van Scholten

Links to other pages dealing with the abolition of slavery in other countries:

13th Amendment to the Bill of Rights

American Civil War

British campaign against slavery

Sir Thomas Buxton (1786-1846)

Thomas Clarkson (1760-1845)

Abraham Lincoln