Risking Obeah: A Spiritual Infrastructure in the Danish West Indies, c. 1800–1848

Simonsen, Gunvor

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-15491-2_8

Gunvor Simonsen⁵

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ((CIPCSS))

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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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Manuscript Sources

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Authors and Affiliations

University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Gunvor Simonsen

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Gunvor Simonsen
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Correspondence to Gunvor Simonsen .

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Editors and Affiliations

Department of History, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
Markku Hokkanen
African Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Kalle Kananoja

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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
Published: 14 April 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15490-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15491-2
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

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