A CARIBBEAN CONNECTION
During the American Revolution Curacao , a Dutch colony in the Caribbean, served as a strategic and commercial hub. It also functioned as a neutral port for the flow of war supplies to the American colonies. Fort Beekenburg Fort Beekenburg was built in the early 1700s to guard Willemstad, the capital of Curaçao. It was named after Nicolaas van Beek, the Governor of the island from 1701 to 1704. Curaçao became a Dutch colony in 1634 when the Dutch West Indies Company captured the island from the Spanish. They established it as a key trading post. I have been visiting the island this December and finding connections to the American Revolution. Today I was in Willemstad. It was named after William II, Prince of Orange (1626 - 1650). At Willemstad The British on 20 December 1780, angered by the flow of supplies through Dutch Caribbean ports like Curaçao, declared war on the Dutch Republic to cripple their colonial trade network. ...