"Let's Put the Background to the Foreground" - nostalgi, turisme og iscenesættelse af en dansk kolonial fortid på de tidligere vestindiske øer

Abstract

“LET’S PUT THE BACKGROUND TO THE FOREGROUND” - NOSTALGIA, TOURISM AND THE EVOCATION OF A DANISH COLONIAL PAST ON U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS 

When Denmark in 1917 sold the West Indies to the United States, official Danish colonialism came to an end. However, the transfer of the islands did not break Danish ties to its former colony. Instead, a group of Danish companies on the islands materialised the idea of an affective bond between the former colony and Motherland. Accordingly, ‘Island Danes’ on and off the islands expressed productive nostalgia and contributed to the creation of a space for tourism on the islands in the decades after 1917. For returnees to Denmark the nostalgia was often amplified. Through their heavy involvement in memory work, they came to form the national-romantic narrative of the colonial past in Danish public memory. Moreover, their efforts to remember – and remind Danes of - the history of Denmark on the islands, became entangled with the islands’ tourism strategy – developed by an inspired Danish tourist chief, and effected in part by the associations Friends of Denmark and The Danish West Indian Society. This way, by reproducing the past and staging a Danish culture on the islands, they indirectly attempted to take ownership over the history of the islands.