Description
This paper interrogates imperial domination and its resistance in relation to the establishment of a large-scale plantation economy on the Caribbean island of St. Croix in the early period of its Danish colonisation (1733-1803). Recent scholarly contributions to the study of imperialism in Historical International Relations (HIR) have emphasised the need for relational approaches to empire. While such approaches are highly valuable because they allow for the study of both past and present imperial formations, the study of imperialism in HIR remains largely anthropocentric. This paper advances a relational conceptual framework to the study of imperial domination and its resistance based on Actor-Network Theory, that takes into account the role of more-than-human entities. Through archival research, this new framework is put to work in a detailed study of the first seventy years of plantation imperialism on St. Croix, thus shedding light on the Danish imperial polity in the Caribbean, which has received only very little attention in IR. The stories told of imperial domination and resistance within the paper involve complex networks of human and more-than-human actors: ships, colonial administration, racism, violence, disease, hurricanes, poisoned stakes, terrain, weaponry, sugar cane, enslaved bodies, and even magic emerge as sources of agency and change. Non-anthropocentric accounts of imperialism and its resistance, such as the one presented in the thesis are important, if IR is to confront the many extractivist, exploitative, and racist socioecological crises of our time, which some have called the Plantationocene.
