Nearby Users
conventional long form: none
conventional short form: Netherlands Antilles
local long form: none
local short form: Nederlandse Antillen
former: Curacao and Dependencies
960 km²
Willemstad (on Curacao)
Netherlands Antillean guilder (ANG)
599
.an
Papiamento, English, Dutch, Spanish, Creole
Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, Protestant, Seventh-Day Adventist, Methodist, Jehovah's Witnesses, other Christian, Jewish
223,652
parliamentary
white, with a horizontal blue stripe in the center superimposed on a vertical red band, also centered; five white, five-pointed stars are arranged in an oval pattern in the center of the blue band; the five stars represent the five main islands of Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten
Once the center of the Caribbean slave trade, the island of Curacao was hard hit by the abolition of slavery in 1863. Its prosperity (and that of neighboring Aruba) was restored in the early 20th century with the construction of oil refineries to service the newly discovered Venezuelan oil fields. The island of Saint Martin is shared with France; its southern portion is named Sint Maarten and is part of the Netherlands Antilles; its northern portion is called Saint-Martin and is part of Guadeloupe (France).
tropical; ameliorated by northeast trade winds
