Dutch Antilles World Scholar: Latin America & the Caribbean, 2011 lncluded Articles .rì1.{:'li.,::li )il .l.iìs\s\:\n\ì.llss- By Gert Oostindie The Dutch Antilles (the former Netherlands Antilles) consist of six small Caribbean islands. The Leeward lslands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao are located just off the Venezuelan coast, while the Windward lslands of Antilles, St. Maarten/St. Martin (half-Dutch, half-French), St. Eustatius, and Saba lie in the northeastern Caribbean. Curaçao, the largest and historically most important of the six islands, was sighted by the expedition of Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. ln 1515 the sparsely populated islands were categorized as islas inútiles, as they held no precious metals or other promising resources. Most Amerindians (Caquetíos) of the Leeward lslands were forcibly shipped to Hispaniola, whence some were later returned. Colonial History When the Dutch West lndia Company (WlC)conquered Curaçao in 1634 and the other islands around this time, the Amerindian population numbered only a few hundred. lnitially the Dutch removed both Spaniards and Amerindians to Tierra Firme (as the continent of South America was known), but over time limited numbers of Amerindians settled on the islands again. Their demographic importance dwindled. The 1816 census disclosed that 564 souls, one-third of the entire Aruban population, were Amerindians, while they had all but disappeared from the other Dutch islands. After the loss of Dutch Brazil and New Netherland, Dutch imperial ambitions in the Americas were limited to the Caribbean. This resulted in the colonization and development of plantation colonies on the Wild Coast (as the area between the Orinoco and Amazon deltas was known), of which Suriname was the most important, and the conquest of several islands in the Caribbean sea, of which ultimately the six Netherlands Antilles (a twentieth-century label) remained within the Dutch fold. Even if none of these islands offered profitable plantation mining or agricultural opportunities, St. Eustatius and particularly Curaçao were successfully developed as free-trade zones in an age of mercantilism, commercial hubs for both legal and illegaltrade in enslaved Africans as wellas a range of commodities. Around 1790 the population of Curaçao was 21,000, including 13,000 slaves, and of St. Eustatius nearly 8,000, including 5,000 slaves. Both islands were relatively densely populated. ln 1795 Curaçao experienced a major slave revolt inspired by the Haitian Revolution and several minor ones. There was continuous maritime maroonage to Tierra Firme. After periods of British occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, the kingdom of the Netherlands took the islands over from the WlC. The slave trade was abolished by the British in 1807, but emancipation came late, in 1863. On the eve of emancipation, slaves were minorities on all the islands; but inhabitants of African origins formed majorities everywhere except for Aruba. The total population of the Netherlands Antilles at that time was 33,000, of which 19,000 were residents of Curaçao. The European population was diverse, with a longstanding presence of Sephardic Jews (those descending from the Jews of Spain and Portugal). Throughout the nineteenth century the economy stagnated and population growth slowed, as the days of mercantilism ended and there was no longer a need for free-trade zones. Metropolitan financial support for local