Background:
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 northern portion is named Saint-Martin and
is part of Guadeloupe, and its southern portion is named Sint
Maarten and is part of the Netherlands Antilles.