The Netherlands Antilles (Dutch: Nederlandse Antillen, pronounced [ˈneːdərlɑntsə ʔɑnˈtɪlə(n)] ; Papiamento: Antias Hulandes), also known as the Dutch Antilles, was a constituent Caribbean country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands consisting of the islands of Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten in the Lesser Antilles, and Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao in the Leeward Antilles. The country came into being in 1954 as the autonomous successor of the Dutch colony of Curaçao and Dependencies, and it was dissolved in 2010, when Aruba (in 1986), Sint Maarten and Curaçao gained the status of constituent countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Bonaire gained the status of special municipalities of the Netherlands as the Caribbean Netherlands. The neighboring Dutch colony of Surinam, in continental South America, did not become part of the Netherlands Antilles but became a separate sovereign country in 1954. All the territories that formerly belonged to the Netherlands Antilles remain part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands today, although the legal status of each island differs. As a group they are still commonly called the Dutch Caribbean, regardless of their legal status.
The islands of the Netherlands Antilles are all part of the Lesser Antilles island chain. Within this group, the country was spread over two smaller island groups: a northern group (part of Leeward Islands) and a western group (part of the Leeward Antilles). No part of the country was in the southern Windward Islands.
Islands located in the Lesser Islands
This island subregion was located in the eastern Caribbean Sea, to the east of Puerto Rico. It consisted of three islands, collectively known as the "SSS islands":
Sint Maarten (the southern part of the island of Saint Martin)
The islands are located approximately 800–900 kilometers (430–490 nautical miles; 500–560 miles) northeast of the ABC islands.
Islands located in the Leeward Antilles
This island subregion was located in the southern Caribbean Sea off the north coast of Venezuela. There were three islands collectively known as the "ABC islands":
Bonaire including an islet called Klein Bonaire ("Little Bonaire")
Curaçao, including an islet called Klein Curaçao ("Little Curaçao")
The Netherlands Antilles have a tropical trade-wind climate, with hot weather all year round. The Leeward islands are subject to hurricanes in the summer months, while those islands located in the Leeward Antilles are warmer and drier.
Spanish explorers discovered both the leeward (Alonso de Ojeda, 1499) and windward (Christopher Columbus, 1493) island groups in the late 16th century. However, the Spanish Crown only founded settlements in the Leeward Islands.
In the 17th century the islands were conquered by the Dutch West India Company and colonized by the Netherlands. From the last quarter of the 17th century, the group consisted of six Dutch islands: Curaçao (settled in 1634), Aruba (settled in 1636), Bonaire (settled in 1636), Sint Eustatius (settled in 1636), Saba (settled in 1640) and Sint Maarten (settled in 1648). In the past, Anguilla (1631–1650), the present-day British Virgin Islands (1612–1672), St. Croix and Tobago had also been Dutch.
During the American Revolution Sint Eustatius, along with Curaçao, was a major trade center in the Caribbean, with Sint Eustatius a major source of supplies for the Thirteen Colonies. It had been called "the Golden Rock" because of the number of wealthy merchants and volume of trade there. The British sacked its only town, Oranjestad, in 1781 and the economy of the island never recovered.
However, with the discovery of oil in Venezuela in the nineteenth century, the Anglo-Dutch Shell Oil Company established refineries in Curaçao, while the U.S. processed Venezuelan crude oil in Aruba. This resulted in booming economies on the two islands, which turned to bust in the 1980s when the oil refineries were closed.
The various islands were united as a single country – the Netherlands Antilles – in 1954, under the Dutch crown. The country was dissolved on 10 October 2010. Curaçao and Sint Maarten became distinct constituent countries alongside Aruba which had become a distinct constituent country in 1986; whereas Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba (the BES islands) became special municipalities within the Netherlands proper.
From 1815 onwards Curaçao and Dependencies formed a colony of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In 1865 a government regulation for Curaçao was enacted that allowed for some very limited autonomy for the colony. Although this regulation was replaced by a constitution (Dutch: Staatsregeling) in 1936, the changes to the government structure remained superficial and Curaçao continued to be ruled as a colony.
The Dutch abolition of slavery in 1863 would hit most of the economies of the Dutch Caribbean islands hard as they were primarily slave labor-driven, plantation-based economies (the King of the Netherlands officially apologising for its part in the trade at a formal ceremony in 2023). With the exception of Aruba, where slavery was not as widespread as the island was considered too dry by the Dutch for large-scale plantations.