St. Eustatius

St. Eustatius is part of the Dutch Windward Islands, which also comprise Saba and St. Martin. English-derived vernaculars are spoken on all three islands (except for the French side of St. Martin). St. Eustatius has played a central though often unrecognized role in the European colonization and settlement of the West Indies. Le Page (1960: 30) states that “the Dutch islands of Curaçao and St. Eustatius became great slave depots for the Caribbean in the seventeenth century, supplying all other colonies there, including Jamaica, either legally or illegally.” In the 17^th century, St. Eustatius was sought after by various European colonial interests due to its central location and proximity to other islands in the Eastern Caribbean. Williams (1983: 97) writes, “St. Eustatius was highly prized by the Dutch due to its proximity to St. Kitts and other British possessions.” Both French and English settlers began to arrive in 1625, and again in 1629, but soon left in both instances due to the lack of fresh water. In 1636, the Dutch established themselves on Statia. At first tobacco, coffee, and cotton were the dominant crops (with some salt gathering). These activities were later replaced, albeit limitedly, by sugar production. Amerindian slaves mostly from Guiana were shipped to work on the island, but they were soon replaced with African slaves by the middle of the 17^th century. The island is relatively small and its drought-ridden climate eventually made it largely unsuitable for use as a significant plantation colony.

French, Spanish and English colonists were already buying slaves at Statia by 1675 (Hartog 1976: 49). Keur and Keur (1960: 39) state, “[t]he main traffic was with St. Kitts, Barbados and St. Thomas.” In 1679, one transport of African 200- 250 slaves went directly to St. Eustatius. Until this event, slaves were generally supplied from Curaçao, the center of the Dutch West India Company slave trade during this period. In 1665, Statia contained 330 Europeans, including children, and somewhere between 800-1000 slaves.

By 1689, Attema (1976: 16) states, “besides Dutch, there were also English, French, Germans, Scots, Irish and Koerlanders” living on the island. Hartog (1976: 29) suggests that Statia was always multilingual from it earliest colonialization, and that, because it was situated among other islands in the Caribbean being colonized by the British, “English soon became the common language of trade”. He explicitly states that “the Dutch customarily adopted the language of the colonized people, whereby Dutch remained as a sort of ruling language for the upper-ten. So the settlers on Curaçao began to speak Papiamento and those on St. Eustatius, Saba and St. Maarten spoke English.” Keur and Keur (1960: 43) report that “the Dutch language was gradually replaced by English, and by 1780 St. Eustatius had adopted and [sic] English pattern of life. The churches asked for bilingual preachers from the homeland. Continued relations with the USA after 1780 kept the English language alive on the islands [i.e. both St. Maarten and St. Eustatius] to the present day”.

In the 18^th century, Statia briefly found its niche in the West Indian economy as first a central slave trading depot in the 1720s, and later in the 1770s, when it became known as the shopping center of the West Indies where all manner of material goods (as well as slaves) could be purchased and exported. Statia emerged as a local slave-trading center by about 1721, just as Curaçao was losing this distinction. The St. Eustatius slave trade reached its peak in 1726 and then seemed to end abruptly by 1729. From this brief peak in Statian slave-trading, the island fell into a lull in general trade until the 1750s-1770s when it earned the names associated with great commerce listed below (e.g. Golden Rock, etc.), without ever reasserting its dominance in the slave trade again.

In 1757, the slave markets in Suriname and Curaçao had reassumed their prominent roles in the distribution of slaves for the Dutch West Indies, while the free trading policy caused St. Eustatius (also known during this period as Money Mountain, Golden Rock, Diamond Rock, Emporium of the Caribbean) to become the commercial center of the Caribbean (Keur and Keur 1960: 40), especially regarding the sale and movement of sugar. Colonists, settlers, and ships of many origins navigating the Americas docked at St. Eustatius to purchase goods and still, to a limited extent, slaves. Ships originating from the so-called 13 colonies in what would eventually become the USA used the facilities on Statia in order to purchase goods and arms in fighting the subsequent American War of Independence. In 1774, as many as 20 American ships at a time could be found in Statia’s harbor. Thus, contact with varieties of English was intense on St. Eustatius during the latter half of the 18^th century. Regarding the island’s role as a meeting place of goods and people during this era, Hartog (1976: 40) states, the number of ships annually anchored at Statia were between 1,800 and 2,700, with its peak reached in 1779 with 3,551 ships. In 1781 the British Navy, under the command of Admiral George Rodney, attacked the island, looted its warehouses, confiscated millions of dollars in goods, and expelled many of its merchants (especially Jews).

In the years following the attack on Statia by Rodney and the British Navy, the free trade in slaves was forbidden in 1784. The Netherlands abolished the slave trade in 1814 and the importation of slaves from Africa to its islands in the Caribbean in 1821 (Attema 1976: 30). The French controlled the island again from 1795 to 1801. The English took over again for one year in 1801. The territory did not return to Dutch control until 1816.

From the population peak of 8,124 persons in 1790, the number of Statia’s residents began to dwindle. The population of Statia has stabilized at approximately 2,000 persons today.

Preliminary data from St. Eustatius (Aceto fc.) reveals a high incidence of interdental fricatives. Th-stopping is the general norm in the Caribbean, including in Statia, but the fricatives [θ] and [ð] are also heard to a significant degree in naturally occurring speech in informal contexts (i.e. playing poker or dominos, drinking in a bar). The social correlates for the distribution of interdental fricatives versus alveolar stops in this location have yet to be determined. Furthermore, Statian Creole English is primarily non-rhotic, though [r] is variably pronounced by speakers in some contexts.