St. Croix is one of the islands which constitute the U.S. Virgin Islands. They were named by Columbus on his second voyage in 1493 for Saint Ursula and her virgin followers. Over the next 300 years, they were held at various times by Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, France, and Denmark-Norway. In 1733, Denmark purchased St. Croix from France. Sugarcane, produced by slave labor, drove the island's economy until slavery was abolished in 1848. The U.S. purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark, for strategic reasons, in 1917 for $25 million dollars and the inhabitants were granted citizenship in 1927. Insofar as exploration and colonization are concerned, the Danes are the bottom feeders of Europe. They were somewhat like vultures eating a zebra's carcass in Africa and wound up with whatever the major powers of Europe didn't
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