Editing Danish West Indies (section)

===Foundation===
[[File:Dansk Vestindia.png|thumb|left|Map of the Danish West Indies]]
Merchants in [[Copenhagen]] asked [[list of Danish monarchs|King]] [[Christian IV of Denmark|Christian IV]] for permission to establish a West Indian trading company in 1622, but, by the time an eight-year monopoly on trade with the [[West Indies]], [[Virginia Colony|Virginia]], [[Viceroyalty of Brazil|Brazil]] and [[Guinea Coast|Guinea]] was granted on 25 January 1625, the failure of the [[Danish East India Company|Danish East India]] and [[Iceland Company|Iceland Companies]] and the [[Thirty Years' War#Danish intervention (1625–1629)|beginning of Danish involvement]] in the [[Thirty Years' War]] dried up any interest in the idea. [[Frederick III of Denmark|Prince Frederick]] organized a trading mission to [[Barbados]] in 1647 under [[Gabriel Gomez (merchant)|Gabriel Gomez]] and the [[de Casseres]] brothers, but it and a 1651 expedition of two ships were unsuccessful. It was not until [[Erik Smit]]'s private 1652 expedition aboard the ''Fortuna'' was successful that interest in the West Indies' trade grew into an interest in the creation of a new Danish colony.<ref name="dookie">Dookhan, Isaac. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=XxT8qxBjwoUC&pg=PA33 A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States]''. Canoe Press, 1974. {{ISBN|9789768125057}}.</ref>

Smit's 1653 expedition and a separate expedition of five ships were quite successful, but Smit's third expedition found his two vessels captured for a loss of 32,000 [[Danish rigsdaler|rigsdaler]]. Two years later, a Danish [[flotilla]] was destroyed by a hurricane in August. Smit returned from his fourth expedition in 1663 and formally proposed the settlement of [[Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands|St. Thomas]] to the king in April 1665. After only three weeks' deliberation, the scheme was approved and Smit was named [[List of Governors of the Danish West Indies|governor]]. Settlers departed aboard the ''Eendragt'' on 1 July, but the expedition was ill-starred: The ship hit two large storms and suffered from fire before reaching its destination, and then it was raided by [[privateer#England/Britain|English privateers]] prosecuting the [[Second Anglo-Dutch War]], in which Denmark was allied with the Netherlands. Smit died of illness, and a second band of privateers stole the ship and used it to trade with neighboring islands. Following a hurricane and a renewed outbreak of disease, the colony collapsed, with the English departing for the nearby French colony on [[Saint Croix]], the Danes fleeing to [[Saint Kitts|Saint Christopher]], and the Dutch assisting their countrymen on [[Tortola|Ter Tholen]] in stealing everything of value, particularly the remaining Danish guns and ammunition.<ref name="dookie"/>