"...For the benefit of the planters and the benefit of Mankind...", The struggle to control midwives and obstetrics on St. Croix, Danish West Indies, 1800-1848.

This study examines the development, structure, and challenges of the midwifery system on St. Croix in the Danish West Indies between the abolition of the slave trade in 1803 and emancipation in 1848. Faced with severe child mortality among the enslaved population, colonial authorities sought to adapt the Danish metropolitan model of state-trained and licensed midwives to the plantation context. The resulting system was a hybrid, incorporating both European-trained “royal” midwives and locally trained enslaved women as plantation midwives. However, economic constraints, planter reluctance, and cultural resistance from enslaved women limited its effectiveness. Midwifery became a contested space where colonial administrators, mostly British-descended planters, and Afro-Caribbean mothers negotiated power, balancing economic priorities, humanitarian aims, and cultural practices. The article argues that reproductive healthcare in the colony was shaped as much by competing social and cultural forces as by medical considerations, and that this interplay reveals the limits of colonial health reform under slavery.