The Central Directorate for the Colonies 1848-1917
Koloniernes Centralbestyrelse 1848-1917
The Central Directorate for the Colonies under the Ministry of Finance was a
directorate headed by a colonial director who was directly responsible to the
Minister of Finance. To the Central Directorate was attached an office called
the Colonial Office. The Central Directorate had a rather independent position;
it was, for instance, entitled to address representations directly to the king
and, after the Colonial Act of 1852, the Central Directorate for the Colonies
had jurisdiction in practically all Danish West Indian cases.
The Central Directorate for the Colonies came under the Ministry of Common
Internal Affairs for the Monarchy from 1855 until 1858, when it returned to the
Ministry of Finance. This short-term organisational move was of no noticeable
administrative or archival significance. This was also the case when the Central
Directorate for the Colonies came under the Ministry of Domestic Affairs
1865-1870.
In 1870, the independent post as colonial director was abolished as a
cost-saving measure, and the Central Directorate for the Colonies was thereafter
headed by one of the permanent secretaries of the Ministry of Finance. The
following year, the Central Directorate was merged with the Colonial Auditing
Office, which had until then been independent, under the Ministry of Finance
(see Accounting and Auditing).
In 1906, there was a minor curtailment of the Central Directorate’s
hitherto unchallenged authority over the Danish West Indies. That year it was
decided to transfer the affairs of the established church to the Ministry of
Ecclesiastical Affairs and Public Instruction (see Ecclesiastical and Educational Affairs).
In 1913, the Central Directorate for the Colonies changed its name to the
Central Directorate for the Danish West Indies, and the Colonial Office changed
its name to the West India Office. This did not result in any practical changes
in the administration, however.
The Danish West Indies were ceded to the United States on 31 March 1917, and
the following day the Central Directorate was abolished. The West India Office,
however, was maintained under the Ministry of Finance to treat the remaining
West Indian matters (see Finance).
Only one Danish official remained in what was now the United States Virgin
Islands; his job, as special commissioner, was to wind up affairs on the
islands. His archives cover the period from 1917 to 1920 and are to be found
among the West Indian local archives
Archives
A detailed catalogue of the archives of the Central Directorate for the
Colonies has been published: Koloniernes Centralbestyrelse, Vejledende
Arkivregistraturer, vol. 20, Copenhagen 1975, pp. 55-91; an English version of
this catalogue can be found in Chapter 25 below. The archives consist of the
following main groups: royal representations, etc. (31 units); copybooks,
journals, and journal files (542 units); thematically sorted files (431 units);
accounting files (62 units); Guinea files (14 units); and East India files (17
units).
An important archival supplement to the Directorate’s central journal
(vols. 200-286) and the associated journal files (boxes 287-542) is Nøgle
til Vestindisk Journal 1849-1933, a mimeographed key to the location of each
single journal file. This key consists of 14 volumes, the contents being
arranged by journal number. In addition to surveying Central Directorate files
1848-1920, the key includes the files of the Secretariat of the Ministry of
Finance from 1920, when it took over this field of authority, until 1933, when
the West Indian journal was closed (see Finance).
A detailed discussion of the organisation of the Central Directorate, its
field of authority, and its filing practices, and of the fate and survival of
its archives until the present, is to be found in Koloniernes
Centralbestyrelse, Vejledende Arkivregistraturer, vol. 20, Copenhagen 1975,
pp. 12-42. This text has also been published as a separate booklet in the form
of The Central Management of the Colonies, Introduction to Vejledende
Arkivregistraturer XX, Copenhagen 1979. A brief survey is to be found in
Wilhelm von Rosen, ed., Rigsarkivet og hjælpemidlerne til dets benyttelse,
vol. II:4, Copenhagen 1991, pp. 1895-1897.
Literature
The most detailed treatment of the Central Directorate for the Colonies is
the introduction to the printed catalogue mentioned above. See also the general
descriptions of the colony’s history. A small and
rather special category of semi-official correspondence 1871-1916 between the
governors of the Danish West Indies and the directors of the Central Directorate
for the Colonies is treated in Wilhelm von Rosen, Breve til embedsmænd,
in Arkiv, vol. 4, 1972, pp. 77-86.
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