The ABC island were first populated after c. 500 A.D. when the ceramic-age Indigenous people migrated here from northern South America. They are known archaeologically as the bearers of Dabajuroid-series ceramics. Upon European contact in 1499 and subsequent Spanish colonization, these Arawakan-speakers were described by the Spanish as Caquetíos. These Indigenous people are known from numerous archaeological sites and their descendants live on the islands to this day.

Spanish colonization of the islands was superficial as they considered the islands islas inútiles (useless islands) for settlement. During the first two decades of the 16th century indieros enslaved and deported hundreds of Indigenous in habitants to the copper mines on Hispaniola, practically depopulating the region. Subsequently, only small Indigenous populations lived in village sunder Spanish administration, herding livestock and farming for subsistence.

The Dutch West India Company (WIC) took control of Curaçao in 1634 and Bonaire and Aruba in 1636 with little resistance from the small Spanish and Indigenous population. They set up forts and their government seat at the mouth of the Sint Anna Bay, today’s Punda in Willemstad. Aruba was primarily a livestock ranch and Bonaire principally produced sea salt. Curaçao thrived as an entrepôt, becoming The Netherland’s most important Caribbean colony during the later 17th and 18th century.

Invited by the WIC, the first small group of Jewish colonists headed by Pernambuco-born Joao de Ylan arrived in Curaçao in 1651. In subsequent years numerous Sephardi merchants settled on the island receiving support from the Company, being allowed to buy slaves, and granted religious freedom. In the 18th century, the Sephardi population came to account for half the white population, be coming the main agents of informal maritime trade with Tierra Firme.

From the 1640s, the WIC used Curaçao as a depot for enslaved Africans from Guinea, supplying the Caribbean and Tierra Firme. By 1675, with an asiento from Spain to supply its colonies with captive Africans, Curaçao became the most important slavemarket in the region. Enslaved people labored on Curaçao’s plantations, in households, and in Willemstad’s port. Some were banished to Bonaire to toil on the saltpans. Slavery was abolished in the Netherlands Antilles and Suriname in 1863.

Dutch Curaçao was a six-hours ail from the Spanish main land and, beginning in the 1650s, Curaçao an ships began to trade essential goods like textiles and alcohol, lacking in the Spanish provinces, for prized cacao and hides. By the mid-18th century, this informal trade, out lawed and policed by Spain as contraband, came to represent half of Curaçao’s total shipping. The mélange of peoples and languages in the transimperial Southern Caribbean gaverise to Papiamentu/o, the creole language of the islands.

Following independence from Spain, the Venezuelan State was established in 1830. While cacao was no longer an important cash crop, other commodities were still regularly smuggled, skirting import duties and port taxes. Alcohol, mainly in the form of Dutch gin, continued to be sold in Venezuela, along with clothes and textiles. Meanwhile, Venezuela supplied the islands with hides and mules as well as vegetables and fruits. No longer illegal, to this day Venezuelan tres puños (traditional wooden ships) supply the arid islands with vital fresh produce.