Fireburn: Revolt, Representation, and Remembrance

This dissertation examines the Fireburn revolt of 1878 on St. Croix in the Danish West Indies as both a historical event and a site of ongoing meaning-making. Rather than approaching Fireburn solely as a moment of post-emancipation labor unrest, the study investigates how the revolt has been archived, mediated, represented, and remembered across time and space, from the late nineteenth century to the present.

Situating Fireburn within Danish, Caribbean, and transatlantic history cultures, the dissertation discusses how colonial power shaped what was recorded and what could be remembered, and how vernacular, material, and cultural practices have challenged and extended the official narratives. The dissertation thus conceptualizes Fireburn as a limit-setting event whose meanings continue to be negotiated across generations and geographies.

The study combines historiographical analysis, archival critique, and material culture studies. It traces representations of Fireburn in print culture, examines the production of silences and asymmetries in colonial archives, and explores vernacular counter-archives such as songs and memorial trees, and museum objects.

The dissertation argues that colonial revolts cannot be fully understood through documentary sources alone and demonstrates the necessity of a plural, relational approach to historical knowledge that acknowledges absence, accepts opacity, and embraces embodied memory as constitutive elements of the historical record. In doing so, the study contributes to scholarship on colonial revolt, post-emancipation labor regimes, and the politics of remembering violent colonial pasts.