Abstract
This chapter provides a social history of African Caribbean obeah men and women in the Danish West Indies (today the US Virgin Islands). Based on a prosopography of 35 obeah experts, Simonsen shows that this was a position dominated by older, African-born men. The chapter documents the infrastructure that experts and clients constructed to stave off the many risks related to obeah. Experts used cash and kind to secure relationships, they employed middlemen, and they seldom treated clients from their own estates. This practice of spatial dissociation, enabled experts to keep out of conflicts that resulted from obeah forces; it kept disgruntled clients away; and it served to defuse rumours that could attract the dangerous attention of the Danish West Indian state.
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Rigsarkivet (The National Archives), Denmark
De vestindiske lokalarkvier (The Danish West Indian Local Archives)
Christiansted byfoged (CB)
38.5.19, & 28, Gæsteretsprotokoller (GRP)
38.6.08-09 & 15, Domprotokoller (DP)
38.9.1-5, 8, 15, 17 & 20-2, Politiretsprotokoller (PRP)
38.31.9 & 11, Politijournaler (PJ)
Den vestindiske regering (VR)
3.81.219, Gruppeordnede sager: Retsvæsen. Mord på plantageforvalter P. Machin, 1832
Generalguvernementet (GG)
2.27.2, 10, 11, 18 & 19, Referatprotokol B (RPB)
2.28.36, 81,100-1, 108, & 112, Sager til referatprotokol B (SRPB)
Centraladministrationen (Central administration)
Reviderede regnskaber, 571
86.58-59, Vestindiske regnskaber, Matrikel for St. Croix
Generaltoldkammeret
390, Vestindiske og guineiske sager, Visdomsbog
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Simonsen, G. (2019). Risking Obeah: A Spiritual Infrastructure in the Danish West Indies, c. 1800–1848. In: Hokkanen, M., Kananoja, K. (eds) Healers and Empires in Global History. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15491-2_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15491-2_8
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