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The Purchase of the Danish West Indies by the United States of America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

Abstract

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Type
Editorial Comment
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1916

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References

1 John, W. Foster’s American Diplomacy in the Orient, 1903, p. 135 Google Scholar.

2 Denmark was especially anxious to have the islands vote upon the cession because it hoped that a vote of the inhabitants of Schleswig would, under the terms of Article V of the Treaty of Prague of 1866, result in the reacquisition of the northern part of Schleswig-Holstein, of which it had been dispossessed by Prussia and Austria two years previously. Article V of the treaty provided that “the populations of the North of Schleswig shall be again united with Denmark in the event of their expressing a desire so to be by a vote freely exercised.”

But the Dane was doomed to disappointment. This provision was a sop to Napoleon III, the high priest of the plebiscite; it was not a promise made in a treaty with Denmark, but in one to Austria, and it was abrogated with the assent of Austria in the Treaty of Vienna of October 11, 1878.

3 Eugene Schuyler’s American Diplomacy, 1886, pp. 23–24.

4 Crandall’s Treaties, Their Making and Enforcement, 2nd ed. 1916, p. 332.

5 Senate Executive Report No. I, 57th Congress, First Session.