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SMALL ISLANDS IN THE CARIBBEAN, THE LAST REMAINS OF THE TROPICAL NETHERLANDS: THE NETHERLANDS ANTILLES AND ARUBA
Author(s) -
HAAN LEO J.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1467-9663
pISSN - 0040-747X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9663.1993.tb00666.x
Subject(s) - citation , geography , library science , history , computer science
More than 350 years ago, ships of the Dutch West-Indian Company sailed into St. Anna Bay, Curacao and conquered the Island from the Spanish. Soon the island became a stronghold for buccaneers and a depot for the flourishing Dutch slave trade. In the course of time, the colony of Curacao grew to encompass the Islands of Aruba and Bonaire and the Dutch Leeward Islands (St. Maarten, Saba and St. Eustatius) situated more than 900 kilometres further north (see Fig. 1). Although one of the first Dutch colonies, eventually the Dutch West Indies could not compete with the Dutch East Indies in terms of its importance to the Dutch economy. Nevertheless, the Dutch West Indies ironically represent the last remains of Dutch colonialism after the independence of Indonesia in 1949, the transfer of Western New Guinea to Indonesia in 1963 and the independence of Surinam in 1975. Table l shows that in both population size and surface area Curacao is the most important island, followed by Aruba. The official language on all the Islands is Dutch. However, the lingua franca on the Leeward Islands is English, and on Curacao, Aruba and Bonaire it is Papiamentu, a language derived from a mixture of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English and various African languages which spread from Curacao.