The Netherlands Antilles was a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The country consisted of several island territories located in the Caribbean Sea. The islands were also informally known as the Dutch Antilles. The country came into being in 1954 as the autonomous successor of the Dutch colony of Curaçao and Dependencies. The Antilles were dissolved in 2010. The Dutch colony of Surinam, although relatively close by on the continent of South America, did not become part of the Netherlands Antilles but became a separate autonomous country in 1954. All the island territories that belonged to the Netherlands Antilles remain part of the kingdom today, although the legal status of each differs. As a group they are still commonly called the Dutch Caribbean, regardless of their legal status. People from this former territory continue to be called Antilleans in the Netherlands.
The flat landscape of Klein Bonaire
In the 18th century, Sint Eustatius was the most important Dutch island in the Caribbean.
Willemstad
A Bulawaya dance in Curaçao
Papiamento or Papiamentu is a Portuguese-based creole language spoken in the Dutch Caribbean. It is the most widely spoken language on the Caribbean ABC islands.
Burial site and monument to Doctor Moises Frumencio da Costa Gomez, the first prime minister of the Netherlands Antilles, with a message inscribed in Papiamento: No hasi ku otro loke bo no ke pa otro hasi ku bo, roughly meaning: "Do not do unto others what you do not want others do unto you"
Catecismo Corticu – the first printed book in Papiamento in 1837
Boo Jantje letter from 1783
Poems in Papiamento, Leiden