1733 slave insurrection on St. John
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Coordinates: 18°20′N 64°44′W / 18.333°N 64.733°W The 1733 slave insurrection on St. John in the Danish West Indies (now St. John, United States Virgin Islands) started on November 23, 1733, when 150 African slaves from Akwamu (present-day Ghana) revolted against the owners and managers of the island's plantations. Lasting several months into August 1734, the slave rebellion was one of the earliest and longest slave revolts in the Americas. The Akwamu slaves captured the fort in Coral Bay and took control of most of the island. They intended to resume crop production under their own control and use Africans of other tribes as slave labor.
Planters regained control by the end of May 1734, after the Akwamu were defeated by several hundred better-armed French and Swiss troops sent in April from Martinique, a French colony. Colony militia continued to hunt down maroons and finally declared the rebellion at an end in late August 1734.
When the Spanish first occupied the West Indies, they used the indigenous people as slave labor but most died as a result of infectious disease, overwork, and war. In the late 17th century, the British, French and Dutch competed for the island after settling it together for a period. The British won out before the Danes claimed Saint John in 1718, but numerous Dutch planters stayed on the island. While some plantations had been started, there was not an adequate supply of laborers among the settlers. Young Danish people could not be persuaded to emigrate to the West Indies in great enough number to provide a reliable source of labor. Attempts to use indentured servants from Danish prisons as plantation workers were not successful. Failure to procure plantation labor from other sources made importing slaves from Africa the main supply of labor on the Danish West Indies islands. Danish ships carried about 85,000 African slaves to the New World from 1660 to 1806.
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