The
Netherlands Antilles (
Dutch Nederlandse Antillen&_160;
(help·info)), previously known as the
Netherlands West Indies or
Dutch Antilles/West Indies, is part of the
Lesser Antilles and consists of two
groups of islands in the
Caribbean Sea Curaçao and
Bonaire, just off the
Venezuelan coast, and
Sint Eustatius,
Saba and
Sint Maarten, located southeast of the
Virgin Islands. The islands form an autonomous part of the
Kingdom of the Netherlands. The islands' economy depends mostly upon
tourism, international financial services, international commerce and shipping and
petroleum.
The Netherlands Antilles was scheduled to be dissolved as a unified political entity on 15 December 2008, so that the five constituent islands would attain new constitutional statuses within the Kingdom of the Netherlands,[2] but this dissolution has been postponed to an indefinite future date.[3]
Both the leeward (Alonso de Ojeda, 1499) and windward (Christopher Columbus, 1493) island groups were discovered and initially settled by Spain. In the 17th century, the islands were conquered by the Dutch West India Company and were used as military outposts and trade bases, most prominent the slave trade. Slavery was abolished in 1863.
In 1954, the status of the islands was up-graded from a colonial territory to a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands as a separate country within the kingdom. The island of Aruba was part of the Netherlands Antilles until 1986, when it was granted status aparte, becoming yet another part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands as a separate country within the kingdom.
