| dc.contributor |
Wright, Winthrop |
|
| dc.contributor |
Digital Repository at the University of Maryland |
|
| dc.contributor |
University of Maryland (College Park, Md) |
|
| dc.contributor |
History |
|
| dc.creator |
La Motta, Gregory R. |
|
| dc.date |
2019-09-05T18:49:03Z |
|
| dc.date |
2019-09-05T18:49:03Z |
|
| dc.date |
1992 |
|
| dc.date.accessioned |
2022-05-20T08:38:48Z |
|
| dc.date.available |
2022-05-20T08:38:48Z |
|
| dc.identifier |
https://doi.org/10.13016/xthm-f7ss |
|
| dc.identifier |
ILLiad # 1272298 |
|
| dc.identifier |
http://hdl.handle.net/1903/24799 |
|
| dc.identifier.uri |
http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/CUHPOERS/117659 |
|
| dc.description |
This study describes how the interaction between Virgin
Islanders and their new American rulers shaped the political
relationship between the Virgin Islands and the United
States. Once control of the islands had passed from Denmark
to the United states, Virgin Islanders forced American
Officials to take sides in local political struggles. These
struggles pitted a mostly white upper class of merchants and
planters against a black middle and working class alliance
that had just recently won some important victories. After
1917, both sides appealed to the American administrators for
assistance.
over the course of the next thirty years, the middle
and working classes achieved greater success than the
planter and merchant elite in obtaining American support.
The middle and working classes gained this support by
emphasizing their loyalty to the United States, and
imploring the Americans to extend to Virgin Islanders the
same rights enjoyed by U.S. citizens on the mainland. By
same rights enjoyed by U.S. citizens on the mainland. By
the end of the Second World War, black Virgin Islanders had
not only gained control of the insular political system but
also had convinced federal officials to extend substantial
economic aid programs to the colony.
Whatever success the elite enjoyed resulted largely
from appealing to the Americans from the common ground of
race. These appeals worked fairly well for the first
fourteen years of American rule, when the Department of the
Navy administered the islands. Cooperation between Navy
officials and the local elite prevented political reforms
that would have granted greater political power to middle
and lower class islanders.
However, numerous protests by black islanders, along
with the Navy's inability to fashion an economic recovery,
forced the federal government to transfer responsibility for
the islands to the Department of the Interior. Less
racially prejudiced than their Navy predecessors, the new
civilian administrators realized that cooperation with black
islanders was necessary to implement an economic recovery
program. This cooperation formed the basis for the a
lasting political relationship between the United States and
the Virgin Islands. |
|
| dc.format |
application/pdf |
|
| dc.language |
en_US |
|
| dc.title |
The Americanization of the Virgin Islands, 1917-1946: Politics and Class Struggle During the First Thirty Years of American Rule |
|
| dc.type |
Dissertation |
|