71-1754._ With a
Supplementary Chapter, 1755-1917. By WALDEMAR WESTERGAARD, Assistant
Professor of History at Pomona College. Introduction by H. MORSE
STEPHENS. Macmillan Company, New York, 1917. Pp. 359.

This work is the history of a company of Danish merchants desiring to
avail themselves of the commercial opportunities of the New World. The
work was undertaken prior to the recent negotiations of the United
States for the purchase of the islands. It is the result of an attempt
to "identify and appraise" a number of official and other papers found
in the Bancroft Collection at the University of California. The study
of these documents led to further research in the Danish libraries and
archives, especially the archives of the Danish West India and Guinea
Company. The work then becomes a treatise on the rise and fall of a
great corporation with business as its objective rather than the
sketch of a mere colony. It has a number of helpful maps and
illustrations.

In writing this work, the author easily realized that treated as an
isolated subject it would be worthless. It is, therefore, dealt with
as a part of European history, that phase commonly characterized as
commercial expansion. He, therefore, in accounting for the Danish
interest in colonization and in estimating the part that nation
actually played, finds that the experiences of the Danes were fairly
typical of those of the Dutch, the French, the English and the
Spanish. The narrative then is a succession of accounts of
speculation, competition, prosperity and depression. There are
sketches of adventurers, buccaneers and pirates all brought forward in
such a way as to tell their own story.

The author directs attention to the West Indies as the great theater
in which was played the drama of history in the New World during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Sugar is presented as king. The
author is chiefly concerned with the crucial test to which the company
was subjected, the establishment of the Brandenburgers at St. Thomas,
the leasing of Guinea and St. Thomas, the governorship of John
Lorentz, the plantation colonies of St. Thomas and St. John, the
introduction of slavery, the slave trade, the relations of the planter
and the company, the acquisition of St. Croix, and the career of the
company under a new charter. In the appendix there is such valuable
information as the list of governors in the West Indies and the
Guinea, the directors and board o