Genealogy & Genetic History Of The Dutch Caribbean

Introduction : Did slaves also participated in the system? Slaves who kept themselves slaves and made love to a slave existence: the slave existence on Curaçao looked different from the calibrated stories about the relationship between white and black suggest. A different look from Slavery.  There was more slavery in Africa than on the Caribbean plantations and in the south of the United States. Yet invariably only whites are addressed to the misery of slavery. It is convenient to forget that blacks and colourds sometimes kept slaves themselves. Not only in Africa, also on Curaçao, where many former slaves became owners themselves. In some cases it even seems as if free men voluntarily chose slavery. There has never been a thorough investigation into the living conditions of the slaves in Curaçao, against that of the ' ordinary man '. A first dive in the National Archives of the Netherlands Antilles immediately produces an image that is perpendicular to the stere...

Since a couple of years ago I have been interested in my family history. My father is of Aruban descent, and my mother from Curaçaon descent. Both have told my very little about my family history and also of the history of the islands. Because of this I took various DNA tests to see where my ancestors came from, and how they shaped the culture that I was brought up with. Of course I take all these DNA tests with a grain of salt, since no DNA company can be accurate regarding your autosomal results. Perhaps in the future it will be more and more accurate. But due to the history of the islands where I come from, I believe the components to be accurate, where as the percentage I'm not so sure about it. My results Maternal haplogroup: L3e2b1a2 My oldest female ancestor, from my mother side came from South-East Africa, this mtdna is mostly found amongst in Zambia, and to a lesser extent also in Angola and Mozambique. I was surprised at this, since I suspected my mtdna to...

Left: Pedro Luis Brion, Centre: Simon Bolivar, Right: Carlos Manuel Piar. It interesting to see that we had different heroes of different backgrounds. doesnt matter what skin colour they had. We had heroes of African descent, Mixed race descent, European descent, Sephardic Jewish descent, and Caquetio (Amerindian) descent. What would have happened if both Luis Brion and Manuel Piar, who were disliked by the Dutch elite, came back to Curaçao with the help of the Venezuelans? No doubt that those two would bring revolution on the island of Curaçao, and Aruba and Bonaire as well. It would have changed the history of our islands, slavery would have been abolished way earlier since both of them were anti-slavery and anti-racist, and perhaps we would be independent from the Netherlands. Pedro Luis Brión was born on July 6, 1782 on the island of Curacao and died on 27 of september 1821 on the island of Curaçao. Carlos Manuel Piar was born on 28 of April 1774 in Curaçao and pass...

Introduction: It is interesting to see that from the Dutch Caribbean, only in Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao there were many uprisings of African slaves, and to a lesser extent in Sint Maarten, Sint Eustatius, and Saba. Slavery in the ABC Islands were mild compared to a lot of islands in the Caribbean and also in Suriname. It was very easy to buy yourself freedom, Slaves could marry each other, interracial marriages were allowed, no racial segregation, except only for religion since the majority of the white population was Protestant and Jewish. And the majority of the non-whites were Catholic. and you could earn money as a slave, and slaves had their own houses and garden. So you would think that the Dutch would have abolished slavery very early, right? But slavery is still slavery, doesn't matter if it was less harsh than the other.  As you can see, there were many slave uprisings in the islands just like the rest of the Caribbean, and there were a lot of slaves flee...