Willemstad, Curaçao
At the crack of dawn, not impossibly early in the tropics, many of us were on deck to witness our approach to the free port of Willemstad, principal city of Curaçao, the largest island of the Netherlands Antilles. Once on shore we would hear we would hear the official language, Dutch, widely spoken, a language famously described by Napoleon as "a disease of the throat." How the Dutch came to be in the Caribbean had been the subject of a presentation on board the previous day. The Spanish were the first Europeans to sail these waters and they gave so many Caribbean islands their names. But, by the time Spain decided that it needed to import African slaves into the New World, the Pope had ruled that land to the east of a line drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands belonged to Portugal. In consequence, it was the Portuguese who were the first shippers of African slaves. With the arrival of Protestantism in northern Europe in the 1530s, the two leading Protestant powers of Britain and Holland decided that the papal ruling did not apply to them and proceeded to involve themselves in what was a hugely lucrative business. Curacao was the main point of assemblage for the slaves in the Dutch slave trade, before onward shipping to the other Dutch colonies in the Americas.
The year of Columbus' first voyage across the Atlantic was also the year in which the Spanish expelled the Moors and the Jews from mainland Spain. Many Sephardic Jews would seek refuge from the Spanish Inquisition in Protestant (but tolerant) Holland, especially in the city of Amsterdam. Members of this community also settled in Curaçao, and this morning we visited their synagogue, the oldest in continuous use in the Americas. It had a sand floor, a reminder of the exile in Egypt and of the method the conversos had used to maintain secrecy of worship from the Spanish Inquisition. Although Dutch is the official language on the island, an intriguing creole is also widely spoken, known as Papiamentu, a fusion of Dutch and African dialects with a liberal sprinkling of Portuguese and Hebrew, the latter of Sephardic origin. In the afternoon we visited the Kura Hulanda Museum, which housed a magnificent collection of artifacts relating to the Atlantic Slave Trade. Curaçao is evidently a community that has successfully come to terms with its past so that it today celebrates its diversity. It also rightly celebrates its marine environment, as our morning visit to the Aquarium and the afternoon swimming and snorkeling options amply demonstrated.
At the crack of dawn, not impossibly early in the tropics, many of us were on deck to witness our approach to the free port of Willemstad, principal city of Curaçao, the largest island of the Netherlands Antilles. Once on shore we would hear we would hear the official language, Dutch, widely spoken, a language famously described by Napoleon as "a disease of the throat." How the Dutch came to be in the Caribbean had been the subject of a presentation on board the previous day. The Spanish were the first Europeans to sail these waters and they gave so many Caribbean islands their names. But, by the time Spain decided that it needed to import African slaves into the New World, the Pope had ruled that land to the east of a line drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands belonged to Portugal. In consequence, it was the Portuguese who were the first shippers of African slaves. With the arrival of Protestantism in northern Europe in the 1530s, the two leading Protestant powers of Britain and Holland decided that the papal ruling did not apply to them and proceeded to involve themselves in what was a hugely lucrative business. Curacao was the main point of assemblage for the slaves in the Dutch slave trade, before onward shipping to the other Dutch colonies in the Americas.
The year of Columbus' first voyage across the Atlantic was also the year in which the Spanish expelled the Moors and the Jews from mainland Spain. Many Sephardic Jews would seek refuge from the Spanish Inquisition in Protestant (but tolerant) Holland, especially in the city of Amsterdam. Members of this community also settled in Curaçao, and this morning we visited their synagogue, the oldest in continuous use in the Americas. It had a sand floor, a reminder of the exile in Egypt and of the method the conversos had used to maintain secrecy of worship from the Spanish Inquisition. Although Dutch is the official language on the island, an intriguing creole is also widely spoken, known as Papiamentu, a fusion of Dutch and African dialects with a liberal sprinkling of Portuguese and Hebrew, the latter of Sephardic origin. In the afternoon we visited the Kura Hulanda Museum, which housed a magnificent collection of artifacts relating to the Atlantic Slave Trade. Curaçao is evidently a community that has successfully come to terms with its past so that it today celebrates its diversity. It also rightly celebrates its marine environment, as our morning visit to the Aquarium and the afternoon swimming and snorkeling options amply demonstrated.
