Fort Oranje on St. Eustatius ca. 1755 (original) (raw)
Related papers
An Archaeological Assessment of St Eustatius, Netherlands Antilles
1996
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the small Caribbean island of St. Eustatius thrived as an important trade center for the European colonies in the New World. Today the island is dotted with the ruins of plantations, forts, warehouses and other vestiges of human occupation, that have been studied by archaeologists for the last two decades. The present study summarizes information from dozens of archaeological reports and scholarly papers and assesses the current state of knowledge about the 288 documented archaeological sites on the island. This will provide planners and scholars with a concise document that will facilitate the coordination of research, preservation, and development goals in the coming years.
2019
St. Eustatius, a small island in the northeastern Lesser Antilles, was one of the busiest ports in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Contested between the Dutch, French, and English, the island attracted thousands of ships a year and became one of the most cosmopolitan places in the New World. Moreover, the island played an important role in the American War of Independence (1775-1783), during which large quantities of arms, ammunition, and gunpowder were shipped to the fledgling United States through St. Eustatius. Relics of this turbulent past are found all over the island and in its surrounding waters. These include warehouses in the historic port district, fortifications all around the island, sugar plantations in the countryside, and a variety of underwater archaeological sites such as shipwrecks, anchorage areas, and docks. Through extensive archaeological and documentary research, this study aims to provide a detailed analysis of the maritime cultural landscape of St. Eustatius over the past four centuries. It focuses on bridging the gap between the marine and terrestrial worlds and demonstrates that in order to truly make sense of the complex interactions, events, and processes that shaped this maritime world, both land and sea need to be studied in relation to each other.
Negotiating tensions: The religious landscape of St. Eustatius, 1636–1795
2016
The Dutch had a nearly blank slate on which to produce their new colony when they settled the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius in 1636. The colonists sought to create a productive agricultural colony, which would require a structured system of economic production and a means for social reproduction. The Dutch elites strategically situated churches on the island’s landscape to produce St. Eustatius as a social space. There were two key tensions that shaped the Dutch elites' decisions on where to construct religious places on the island landscape: how to maintain the Dutch Reformed Church as the sole public religion while respecting individuals’ right to the freedom of conscience, and how to find the proper balance between capitalist accumulation and Protestant aestheticism. While the Dutch elites hoped that their positioning of religious places would create a stable society, the majority of the population lived this space in a manner different from the Dutch elites’ plan.
In this thesis, a synthetic analysis of historical and archaeological material from slave sites across the Americas is used to identify the cultural role of the slave holder in transforming African-American societies. Using a comparative approach, I have reviewed patterns associated with each European colonial power. It is generally believed that environmental conditions determined much in the way of slave architecture and foodways. However, I will show that ther are specific patterns in slave related architecture, foodways, religion and laws that are linked to Euro-ethinic cultural patterns in English, French, Spanish, Dutch and Danish colonies during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. I have also identified the temporal changes in the treatment of slaves during the pre-emancipation period that have specific material cultural patterns associated with the Euro-ethnic identity of each colonial power. Using St. Eustatius in the Netherlands Antilles as a case study, I demonstrate the efficacy of comparative analyses in identifying Euro-ethnic cultural trends that guided and affected enslaved African’s lives and are reflected in material cultural remains. These cultural markers can be classified within three thematic catagories that will provide common threads thoughout the thesis. First, ethnicity, comprising the Euroethnic origins of masters, Native American communities, and diverse African cultural legacies, influenced slaves’ lives. Second, slave roles as agricultural labourers, skilled tradesmen, soldiers, watchmen and then as natives of the various colonies clearly affected their sense of identity. Third, power relations between masters and slaves influenced aspects of slaves’ daily life to varying degrees in each colony. On St. Eustatius the comparisons are articulated on two levels. First, slave involvement in the colonial economy on St. Eustatius was unlike that found in the other colonies in that slaves were much more active actors within it. The Statian economy was not based upon plantation monoculture but on providing a free trade port that was then unequalled in the West Indies. In this economy, slaves were not commodities but also direct participants as merchants and traders themselves to a degree not found anywhere else. No previous researcher has attempted to reconstruct how slaves worked in this trade economy. Second, this involvement of slaves in the economy led to a unique position in the cultural and economic landscape as perceived by their masters on the island. This is reflected in the location of slave housing, laws governing slave participation in economic activities, slave religion, and in opportunities for escape and resistence. As part of this comparative analysis, I have also conducted a thin-section analysis of slave produced ceramics or Afro-Caribbean ware from St. Eustatius, Nevis, St. Lucia, Antigua, St. Croix and Barbuda. The goal was to examine any island specific differences in clay types to provide evidence for possible circum-Caribbean trade networks for these ceramics. I have determined that each island produced unique ceramic types and that there may have been some exchange of these vessels among islands. The conclusion reveals that only a comparative analysis on a global scale can identify the unique parameters impacting slave material culture under each European power. It is hoped that this thesis will encourage further comparative research, particularly in French, Spanish and Portuguese colonial areas.
Heritage management on St. Eustatius The Dutch West Indies headquarters project
The first cultural heritage management organisation on St Eustatius, the St.Eustatius Historical Foundation, was established in 1974. During the 1980-1990snumerous archaeological projects, including site inventories, were conducted byNorman F. Barka and his students at the College of William and Mary (USA) andalso by Leiden University’s Aad Versteeg. Much of Barka’s work was conducted inconjunction with a number of building restoration/renovation projects completedduring the 1980s.The Island Territory first drafted a Monuments Ordinance in 1989. AMonuments Foundation was established in 1990, and in 1992 the Curaçao basedarchitecture firm Plan D2 compiled a “Master Plan for the Oranjestad HistoricCore Restoration,” which led to an inventory of 110 monument sites by Saskiade Kock in 1995, and two more urban historic renovation plans for the island in1996 (Plan D’2 1989; Haviser and Gilmore 2011). The St. Eustatius Center forArchaeological (SECAR) was initially conceived in 1997, however, funding for theproject was not made available until 2004. The author was the founding Directorand also acted as the Island Archaeologist in the service of the St Eustatius IslandGovernment. With SECAR, the significance of archaeological heritage on St.Eustatius is reaching a broader public and professional audience than ever before(Gilmore 2006a, 2006b, 2006c, 2006d, 2008, 2009, 2013, 2014a, 2014b).In May 2008, a monuments ordinance was passed by the Island Council,however, there is still no local protection for archaeological heritage in place; the St.Eustatius Center for Archaeological Research (SECAR) has spearheaded an effortto alleviate this issue. SECAR has an unusual opportunity to heavily influencehow Dutch heritage laws will be implemented on the BES islands (Gilmore &Dijkshoorn 2005). Of primary importance is the aforementioned European UnionValetta Convention. Under the Valetta Treaty, all archaeological heritage within asignatory’s country is protected. Each nation decides how to enforce the tenets ofthe treaty and to what extent research archaeology is permitted. As it now stands in the Netherlands, commercial archaeology conducted prior to developmentis the only option. Also, all archaeology is paid for by the developer—not thegovernment.The CRM project described here was conducted prior to the implementationof any EU or local legislation governing archaeological sites and architectural monuments. The project was planned, conceived and completed as a potentialmodel for future restoration and archaeological work on the island.
An 'Emporium for all the World': Commercial archaeology in Lower Town, St. Eustatius
Managing our past into the future: Archaeological heritage management in the Dutch Caribbean, 2015
The change in political status of Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba (the BES islands), which became special municipalities of the Kingdom of the Netherlands on October 10, 2010, brought about an explosion in commercial building activities on St. Eustatius (affectionately called Statia by the local population). At the same time, new laws governing the archaeological heritage were implemented. The St. Eustatius Center for Archaeological Research (SECAR) was founded in 2000 to conduct research on the island’s rich cultural heritage through archaeological field schools. Since the constitutional change on the BES islands, SECAR has also been conducting commercial archaeological work on the island. A large number of commercial archaeological projects all over the island were carried out by the author over the last two years, including work on former sugar plantations, the historic town center of Oranjestad, and Lower Town, the island’s former commercial port district. It is the latter area that produced some of the most interesting research results of the last few years. This chapter will present and discuss the results of various archaeological projects carried out in Lower Town, which is believed to have the densest concentration of archaeological remains of any area of comparable size in the Americas.