page_title: History of Curaçao
section_title: Modern history
hierarchical_section_title: History of Curaçao / Modern history
caption_attribution_description: Español: Luis Brión, Almirante venezolano,retrato realizado por Antonio Esteban Frías en 1913 y reposa en el salon eliptico del Palacio Federal en Caracas - Venezuela
context_page_description: The history of Curaçao starts with settlement by the Arawaks, an Amerindian people coming from the South American mainland. They are believed to have inhabited the island for many hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans.
context_section_description: Following the example of England (1834) and France (1848), the Dutch abolished slavery in 1863, bringing a change in the economy with the shift to wage labour. The Dutch state compensated the slave owners with 200 guilders per slave for the loss of their property. Some inhabitants of Curaçao emigrated to other islands, such as Cuba, to work in sugar cane plantations. Other former slaves had nowhere to go and remained working for the plantation owner in the tenant farmer system. This was an instituted order in which the former slave leased land from his former master. In exchange the tenant promised to give up most of his harvest to the former slave master. This system lasted until the beginning of the 20th century.
  Until the beginning of the twentieth century Curaçao lived on trade, agriculture and fishery. The economic tide turned in 1914 when large petroleum reserves were discovered in Venezuela. Shell immediately established an oil refinery on the island, Isla Refinery, near Asiento - where slaves were previously traded.
  In the 1920s and early 1930s Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe came to Curaçao . Most of them started their careers as peddlers, but they knew how to get ahead and managed to attain great prosperity. They kept their Jewish identity and formed a close-knit and isolated group. In the 1980s and 1990s the group's size diminished dramatically. Most of the first settlers died of old age and, because of political insecurity and economic decline, many Ashkenazi Jews left the island in the 1980s to settle elsewhere, especially in the United States.
  On 8 June 1929 Fort Amsterdam was raided and captured by Venezuelan rebel Rafael Simón Urbina together with 250 others. They plundered weapons, ammunition and the treasury of the island. They also managed to capture the Governor of the island, Leonardus Albertus Fruytier, and hauled him off to Venezuela on the stolen American ship Maracaibo.
  Following the raid the Dutch government decided to permanently station marines and ships on the island.
  During the Second World War, the island played an important role in the supply of fuel for the Allied forces. In 1940, before the invasion of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany, the British occupied Curaçao and the French Aruba. The presence of powers other than the Netherlands causes alarm to the Venezuelan government. The proximity of these islands, traditional bases to launch incursions against Venezuelan territory, and the fact of dominating the entrance to the Gulf of Venezuela more than justify this concern. In 1941 the US troops occupied the island and built military airports in Aruba ("Dakota") and Curaçao ("Hato"). The main purpose was the fight against another expected attacks of submarines and long-distance Nazi bombers, which corresponded to the American orientation in the primary threat of a German invasion with the help of German settlers in Latin America, in a tone opposite to the British vision.
  In  1942 the port of the island, one of the main sources of fuel for the Allied operations, was besieged by German submarines on several occasions under Neuland Operation. In August 1942, the Germans returned to Curaçao and attacked a tanker and received fire from a Dutch shore battery before slipping away. The US Navy established the Fourth Fleet, which was responsible for countering enemy naval operations in the Caribbean and in the South Atlantic. The US Army also sent aircraft and personnel to help protect the oil refineries and bolster the Venezuelan Air Force.
  In 1954, Curaçao, together with the other Netherlands Antilles, gained political autonomy.
caption: Luis Brión, a Curaçao-born Venezuelan admiral
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