India Company settled on St. Thomas in 1672 and St. John in 1694, later purchasing St. Croix from France in 1733. The islands became royal Danish colonies in 1754, named the Danish West Indian Islands (). Initially the currency was the Danish West Indian rigsdaler, replaced by the daler in 1849. The islands proved ideal for sugar plantations: sugarcane, produced by enslaved Africans, drove the islands' economy during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Other plantation crops included cotton and indigo dye. During the 17th and 18th centuries, a sizable Jewish community also began to settle on the islands. In 1733, St. John was the site of one of the first significant slave rebellions in the New World when Akan–Akwamu slaves from the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) took over the island for six months. The Danish were able to defeat the enslaved Africans with help from the French in Martinique. Instead of allowing themselves to be recaptured, more than a dozen of the ringleaders shot themselves before the French forces could capture them. It is estimated that by 1775, slaves outnumbered the Danish settlers by a ratio of 8:1. After another slave rebellion occurred on St. Croix, slavery was abolished by Governor Peter von Scholten on July 3, 1848, now celebrated as Emancipation Day. Over the following years, strict labor laws were implemented several times, leading to the 1878 St. Croix labor riot. With the plantations no longer as profitable, Danish settlers began to abandon their estates, causing a significant drop in population and the overall economy. Additionally, the 1867 hurricane and earthquake and tsunami further impacted the economy. For the remainder of the period of Danish rule, the islands were not economically viable and significant transfers had to be made from the Danish state budget to the authorities in the islands. The United States began to take an interest in the islands, and in 1867 a treaty to sell St. Thomas and St. John to the U.S. was agreed but never effected. A number of reforms aimed at reviving the islands' economy were attempted, but none had great success. A second draft treaty to sell the islands to the United States was negotiated in 1902 but was defeated in the upper house of the Danish parliament in a tie vote (because the opposition carried a 97-year-old life member into the chamber). The onset of World War I brought the