Editing 1733 slave insurrection on St. John (section)

===Danish occupation of St. John===
[[File: The West Indian Atlas.jpg|thumb|300px|West Indies harbor]]
In 1718 the Danish claimed the island of St. John to develop [[Sugar production in the Danish West Indies|sugar plantations]] and crops such as indigo and cotton; there was an especially great demand for sugar and prices were high in Europe. Dutch planters were still important on the island. By mid-1733, planters had developed 109 plantations, and slaveholders owned more than 1,000 African slaves on St. John.<ref name=Rebellion /> One-fifth of the plantations were then devoted to sugar; by the end of the century, most would be, and the total slave population would be 2,500.<ref name=Rebellion /> In 1733 the population of African slaves on St. John was more than five times as large as that of the European inhabitants: 1,087 slaves and 206 whites.<ref name=Africana>{{Cite book | author1=Appiah, Anthony | author2=Gates, Henry Louis | title=Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience | year=1999 | publisher=Basic Civitas Books | location=New York | isbn=0-465-00071-1 | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/africanaencyclop00appi }}</ref> Many of St. John's plantations were owned by people residing on [[St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands|St. Thomas]]. These absentee landowners hired [[Slavery in the United States#Efficiency of slaves|overseers]] to manage their lands and slaves on St. John. Under these conditions, overseer cruelty flourished. The Danish West India Company provided only six soldiers for the defense of St. John, which supplemented the local white [[militia]].<ref name=Rebellion />