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| Caribbean Property Magazine Home / March 2009 / 'Two Nations in Harmony' | SEND THIS PAGE TO A FRIEND  |
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MARCH  2 0 0 9Issue 26
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| TWO NATIONS IN HARMONY by Raquel B. Tejeda Considering that not much is in harmony in today’s world, it is a delight to visit a tiny island that is shared in such harmony by two nations – in this case Sint Maarten, the Dutch side and Saint Martin, the French side. It is only 37 square miles, but two nations and over 80 nationalities happily get along in peace and harmony. SAINT-MARTIN AND SINT MAARTEN HAS BEEN SHARED BY THE FRENCH AND THE DUTCH IN A SPIRIT OF NEIGHBORLY COOPERATION AND MUTUAL FRIENDSHIP FOR ALMOST 350 YEARS. The smallest island in the world ever to have been partitioned between two different nations, Saint-Martin and Sint Maarten, has been shared by the French and the Dutch in a spirit of neighborly cooperation and mutual friendship for almost 350 years. The border is almost imperceptible and people cross back and forth without ever realizing they are entering a new country. There are four boundaries - Belle Vue / Cole Bay, French Quarter / Dutch Quarter, Low Lands / Copecoy and Oyster Pond, testifying to centuries of peaceful cohabitation and the treaty that made the arrangement possible. All the same, each side has managed to retain much of the distinctiveness of its own national culture. The French tend to emphasize comfort and elegance. The beaches are secluded, the luxury resorts provide lavish accommodations, and the restaurants offer the finest dining experiences anywhere in the Caribbean. The latest French fashions can be found in many of the shops, and the smell of fresh croissants and pastries mixes everywhere with the spicy aromas of West Indian cooking. Small cafés and charming bistros add a decidedly Gaelic and cosmopolitan flair to the place. On the whole the atmosphere remains very relaxed.  On the other hand, St. Maarten with its busy cruise port and bustling commercial district has long been an active center for trade and tourism. More developed and at the same time more informal, it is very Dutch in flavor and still has strong ties with fellow compatriots in the other Netherlands Antilles. Between the two different cultures in St. Martin and St. Maarten, vacationers will be able to find just about every kind of activity they might want for a perfect holiday in the sun. Located midway through the chain of islands in the Caribbean, just as the Antilles begin to curve to the south, St. Martin is sunny and warm year-round, averaging 82 degrees Fahrenheit in summer and just 2 degrees cooler in winter. The island is buffeted by cooling trade winds that keep things temperate all year long. Average annual rainfall comes to about 45 inches, most of which occurs around late summer and early fall. Sint Maarten is part of the Netherlands Antilles and encompasses the southern half of the island. Its population is approximately 30,000 and the official language is Dutch although Papiamento and English are widely spoken. Sint Maarten is an "island area" or a component of the Netherlands Antilles – the status would be comparable to a municipality. The Netherlands Antilles are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, however it is not in the European Union. Its currency is the Antillean guilder (however, the United States dollar is widely accepted). A planned restructuring of the Netherlands Antilles will see Sint Maarten become a separate country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands (like Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles are now). This dissolution is still planned, but has been postponed to an indefinite future date. The island area is 13 square miles. Sint Maarten is ruled by an island council, an executive council, and an administrator appointed by the Dutch Crown. Its capital is Philipsburg. Sint Maarten borders the French overseas collective or territory of Saint-Martin, which occupies the northern half of the island. The capital of French Saint Martin is Marigot. Today, St. Martin is a commune of Guadeloupe which is an overseas department of France. Islanders are entitled to vote in French elections. St. Maarten, like many other Caribbean islands, was spotted by Christopher Columbus in 1493. But the island's real history began with French and Dutch settlers who divided the island in 1648. They have lived side by side ever since. St. Maarten gained partial independence from the Netherlands in 1954. The dual identity of this island causes confusion about the correct spelling of the name: the Dutch side as part of the Netherlands Antilles is correctly called “Sint Maarten”, the French side “Saint Martin”. But there are all imaginable miss spellings around; even Air France flies to Sint Marteen. Also popular (leaving out the repetitive acronym for Saint) is Maartens, Maartin, Marten, Marteens, Martins and Martens, or the very creative Martaan, Martan. Some folks like to ccombine the names into StMaarten/StMartin. The cultural diversity of St. Maarten springs from its historical role as a crossroads for visitors to the New World. Dutch, French and British traders brought European traditions, while Afro-Caribbean people brought the language and culture of West Africa. Today the range of influences is reflected in the number of languages spoken. Dutch is the official language, but English is taught in schools and spoken everywhere, while other common languages are Spanish and Papiamento, the dialect of the Netherlands Antilles. St. Maarten's premier cultural event is its annual Carnival, which includes parades, calypso competitions, reggae shows, and an endless array of stands serving traditional island food.  The story of St. Maarten begins far to the south, in a region of the Amazon jungle known as the Orinoco river basin. Before Columbus arrived here during his second voyage in 1493, the island had already been inhabited for some one thousand years. The first people to settle here were a tribe of Arawak Indians who left their homeland in the Orinoco basin of South America and kept migrating upwards along the chain of islands in the Caribbean. They gave it the name "Sualouiga" meaning "Land of Salt" for the salt-pans and the brackish water they found here in great abundance. The few fresh water springs around Paradise Peak, Mount William, Billy Folly, and in the Lowlands could only support a small population, and this is where they mainly tended to congregate. A number of artifacts from this period are to be found preserved in the St.Martin Museum: On the Trail of the Arawaks. The Arawaks were later supplanted by a more aggressive tribe of Indians, the Caribs, who came down from North America and for whom the entire Caribbean is named. | ||
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The tranquility of the Arawaks would not last for long. They were followed by another Amazonian group, the Caribs. A warrior people, the Caribs steadily pushed the Arawaks off St. Maarten and took the island for themselves--only to lose it in turn to the Europeans. Christopher Columbus sighted the island on November 11, 1493, the holy day of St. Martin of Tours. He claimed it for Spain the same day, and it is from this day that the island bears its name. Columbus never actually set foot on the island, but rather claimed it for Spain as he was passing by. Aside from asserting title to the place, the Spanish never took much interest in St. Martin, due to their obsession with the greater conquests of Mexico and South America. It was virtually forgotten by Europeans until the 1620s, when Dutch settlers began extracting salt from St. Maarten's ponds and exporting it back to the Netherlands, so the Dutch, seeking an outpost halfway between their colonies in Brazil and Nieue Amsterdam (now New York), occupied the island in 1631. The Dutch West India Company installed Jan Claeszen van Campen as governor, erected their first fort on the site of Fort Amsterdam, and began to mine salt. Known as the Old Spanish Fort, this bastion still stands at Point Blanche.  Before long, however, the Spanish, who wished to maintain their state monopoly in this essential preservative and who also became more aware of the island's commercial possibilities, drove off the Dutch in 1633 and erected a fort to assert their authority. The Dutch then moved on to occupy Curaçao. In 1644, a Dutch fleet under the command of Peter Stuyvesant attempted unsuccessfully to retake the island. Stuyvesant, who later became governor of New Amsterdam (present-day New York), lost a leg to a Spanish cannonball during the fighting. Although Stuyvesant was buried in New York, his leg rests in a cemetery in Curaçao. Over the next fifteen years, a number of abortive attempts were made by the Dutch to reclaim their lost possession. The Spanish Commander, who was regularly besieged during this period, asked permission after his last victory to abandon the island, and in 1647 this right was finally conceded to him by the King of Spain. Laborers were brought in from Puerto Rico to dismantle the fortress, and the Spanish set sail, leaving behind, according to legend, a small contingent of French and Dutch who hid on the island and then sent out to neighboring colonies for reinforcements. Events in Europe soon affected the island's destiny. With the end of the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Netherlands, the Spanish no longer needed a base in the Caribbean. They left St. Maarten, and the island was soon claimed by both the French (who sailed over from St. Kitts) and the Dutch (from St. Eustatius). After some skirmishes, the two powers signed a treaty in 1648 which divided the island between them. Although its historical truth is somewhat less than ironclad, local legend claims that a Dutchman and Frenchman stood back to back and walked in opposite directions around the shoreline, drawing the boundary from the spot where they met. As for why the French ended up with more land, the story notes the Dutchman's progress was slowed by the large quantity of Geneve that he required for the walk. The neighbors did not coexist peacefully at first, and the territory changed hands sixteen times between 1648 and 1816. Nonetheless, the Dutch side of the island soon became an important trading center for salt, cotton, and tobacco. Wealth also arrived with the establishment of sugar plantations, worked by slave labor. When slavery was abolished in the mid-19th century, the plantations closed down and St. Maarten's prosperity ended. For the next one hundred years, the island sank into an economic depression.  The situation began to change in 1939, when all import and export taxes were rescinded and the island became a free port. Princess Juliana International Airport opened in 1943, and four years later the island's first hotel, the Sea View, welcomed its first guests. In the next few decades, St. Maarten boomed as an international trading and tourism center. Today, Dutch St. Maarten has nearly 3,000 hotel rooms and is visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year. HOW THE DUTCH AND FRENCH FINALLY PARTITIONED THE ISLAND MAKES FOR A GREAT STORY. TWO NATIONS ON ONE ISLAND How the Dutch and French finally partitioned the island makes for a great story. Supposedly, the two groups held a contest. Starting at Oyster Pond on the east coast, they would walk westwards -- the French along the northern edge, the Dutch along the southern -- and where they met they would draw a dividing line across the island. The French set off, having fortified themselves with wine, the Dutch with gin. The ill effects of the gin, however, caused the Dutchmen to stop along the way to sleep off their drunk; consequently, the French were able to cover a much greater distance. In truth, though, the French had a large navy just off shore at the time the treaty was being negotiated, and they were able to win concessions by threat of force. The treaty was signed on top of Mount Concordia in 1648, but despite the reputation for peaceful cohabitation, the border was to change another 16 times until 1815 when the Treaty of Paris fixed the boundaries for good. The cultivation of sugar cane introduced slavery onto the island, and hundreds of African men, women, and children were imported for this purpose. The French finally abolished slavery on July 12, 1848 -- a date now celebrated as Schoelcher Day. The Dutch slaves were emancipated 15 years later. Following the end of slavery, the island entered a serious depression that lasted until 1939, when the island was declared a duty-free port. The Dutch began developing a tourist industry in the 1950's, but the French didn't take advantage of this opportunity until the 1970's. St. Martin continued its large-scale construction projects throughout the 1980's, but now most of the development has been completed, and great care has been taken to preserve the island's natural resources. And why do people flock to this happy dual nation island in the sun? Well it is for the sun, the fun, the beaches and more…. 1. Friendly and Safe. No reason to be trapped in the resort – this island is to be enjoyed and explored. Rental car is a must to experience St. Maarten/St. Martin and its friendly people.Maybe the rest of the world should study this small island and it’s two nations as an example of countries can co-exist in harmony which in turns adds to the economic strength of each nation. Author: Raquel B. Tejeda a native of Mexico, and medical professional, calls herself the” accidental freelance writer.” As a keen observer of the Latin political and social scenes she began to write occasionally for various Latin publications leading her to an exciting career as a part-time journalist. | ||
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Environmental Sustainability
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