ABSTRACT
Six islands make up the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, located in the Lesser Antilles chain of the Caribbean Sea: Sint Maarten, Sint Eustatius, and Saba in the northern, windward island group, east of the Virgin Islands; and Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao in the southern, leeward group, off the coast of Venezuela. Christopher Columbus sighted the northern islands during his 1493 voyage, and his successors subdued the local Carib population. The Spanish navigator Alonso de Ojeda landed on Curaçao in 1499. In 1527, Spain claimed Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao as its own and the Arawak inhabitants as its subjects. After a period of struggle for control among several European colonial powers, all six islands became Dutch possessions in the early 1600s and for the most part remained so thereafter. In 1845, they were officially organized as the Netherlands Antilles, and in 1954, they became an integral part of the Netherlands. In 1986, Aruba separated from the other five islands, attaining equal status as an autonomous part of the Netherlands.
