Skin Colour as a Tool of Regulation and Power in the Danish West Indies in the Eighteenth Century

IntroductionIn describing societal structures, especially during slavery, Caribbean social historiography has traditionally used a pyramid based on colour differences. At the bottom of the pyramid were enslaved persons, who were primarily black; in the middle were freed, persons who were coloured; and at the top were free persons, who were white.2 This approach illuminated social structures as visualized through the division of groups according to skin colour. However, this obvious distinction has meant that the question of how the visualization of structure came about is often ignored or seen largely as the result of the plantation system. It seems as if the intimate connection between agency and structure has been forgotten. As a result, encolouring3 has been disconnected from the efforts of historical actors. By failing to problematize the categories of white and black as historical constructions formed by the politics of inclusion and exclusion, Caribbean social historiography is trapped in essentialist perceptions of skin colour.4 In this article, attention will be focused on the process of encolouring social reality in the Caribbean, using the Danish West Indies as the laboratory. Skin colour was more than a biological phenomenon; it was also a construction formed by social actors. This study will look, therefore, at how connections between status and colour were created by the use of strategies and techniques of power by members of the plantocracy and the colonial administration. It will look at how skin colour came to provoke a web of associations and ideas concerning the constitution of society and its subjects: their status, occupation, condition and opportunities in life; in other words, how came to mean blacks, slaves came to mean Coloureds, and slave masters came to mean whites.5Placing the Body in the TownAs in Denmark (and all over Europe for that matter], towns in the Danish West Indies in the eighteenth century were designed to radiate order and symbolize the legitimate (and God-given) power of the Euro-Caribbean elite. Straight lines, regularity and symmetry guided this type of town planning.6 However, the aim of establishing the Danish West Indian towns as symbols of Euro-Caribbean power was severely hampered by the large presence of Afro-Caribbeans. Apart from urban enslaved persons and freed Afro-Caribbeans, enslaved persons on plantations also found their way into the towns.In order to maintain what they thought was a proper town space, colonial authorities sought to minimize the presence of enslaved persons on plantations and free(d) Afro-Caribbeans in the towns. In 1747, Governor Jens Hansen issued an ordinance intended to ensure that freed Afro-Caribbeans and their descendants would live in separate parts of the towns, the so-called Free Gutters or ghettos. This obviously limited the areas where the freed Afro-Caribbeans could live, but it was also a means of ensuring that contact between Afro- and Euro-Caribbeans would mostly take place within the frame of the slave-master relationship. The law dividing the Euro- and the Afro-Caribbean part of town was followed by regulations that forbade Euro-Caribbeans to participate in parties held by freed Afro-Caribbeans.7 By creating a certain spatial organization, these arrangements reinforced the link between low status and dark skin colour that constituted the basic relation between societal groups in the Danish West Indies.The concept of separate space for each group affected nearly every aspect of colonial life. As can be observed on maps made by P.L. Oxholm, a plantation owner and colonial official, at the end of the eighteenth century, Euro- and Afro-Caribbean prisoners were held in separate cells inside the forts that served as prisons. Oxholm points out precisely which cells were for Negroes and which were for Whites.8 Johan Lorentz Carstens, a plantation owner, writing about Charlotte Amalie in the 173Os, mentions another type of detention, namely, a foul detention hole called Svarte-Gath. …

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