ABSTRACT
During the past 350 years, the town of Oranjestad on St Eustatius (otherwise known as Statia) in the Netherlands Antilles has passed through multiple phases of development. The transformation of its urban landscape is worthy of study for its particularity. The economy of the island, uniquely in the Caribbean, was primarily focused not on sugar but free trade, resulting in a mix of various cultures through commerce on the island unparalleled in the Caribbean during the colonial period. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Dutch merchants on St Eustatius built a plantation community unlike that found on other islands. The urban versus rural contexts were reflected in social and economic roles assigned to each place that were unique to St Eustatius. Finally, the decline of trade on the island after the 1820s resulted in a massive decline of population and general urban decay for the next 150 years. Each of these stages will be explored in detail through documentary, archaeological, and cartographic evidence. It will be shown that the transformation of this urban landscape was not solely tied to the rise and fall of the West Indian sugar industry (and slavery), as economic historians would have us believe. The story on St Eustatius is much more complex.
