Bonaire
Bonaire is a Caribbean island in the Leeward Antilles. A special municipality of the Netherlands, its capital is the port of Kralendijk, on the west coast of the island. Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao form the ABC islands, off the coast of Venezuela. The islands have an arid climate that attracts visitors seeking warm, sunny weather all year round, and they lie outside the Main Development Region for tropical cyclones. Bonaire is a popular snorkeling and scuba diving destination because of its multiple shore diving sites, shipwrecks and easy access to the island's fringing reefs.
As of 1 January 2025, the island's population total 26,552 permanent residents, an increase of 10,011 since 2012. The island's total land area is ; it is long from north to south, and ranges from wide from east to west. A short west of Bonaire across the sea is the uninhabited islet of Klein Bonaire with a total land area of. Klein Bonaire has low-growing vegetation including cactus, with sparse palm trees near the water and is bordered by white sandy beaches and a fringing reef. The reefs, beaches and on-island reserves located on both Bonaire and Klein Bonaire are under the protection of the Bonaire National Marine Park, and managed by STINAPA Bonaire.
Bonaire was part of the Netherlands Antilles until the country's dissolution in 2010, when the island became a special municipality within the country of the Netherlands. It is one of three special municipalities in the Caribbean; the others are Sint Eustatius and Saba. 80% of Bonaire's inhabitants are Dutch nationals, and nearly 60% of its residents were born in the former Netherlands Antilles and Aruba.
Etymology
The name 'Bonaire' is thought to be derived from the Caquetio word 'Bonay, meaning 'low country'. The early Spanish and Dutch modified its spelling to Bojnaj and also Bonaire. French influence, while present at various times, was never strong enough to make the assumption that the name means 'good air'. According to another theory, the name might be derived from the Spanish phrase "buen aire", which does mean 'good air', as the Spanish were the first Europeans to colonise the island.History
Original inhabitants
The earliest evidence of human habitation on the islands is from the Archaic period; archaeological evidence suggests the people lived in family-based groups of approximately 100 and were semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers and fishers. Of the islands, Curaçao appears to have been settled first, approximately 4500 BP. The earliest evidence of human habitation in Bonaire is at Lagun and dates to approximately 3400 BP ; Curaçao appears to have become temporarily uninhabited in the same period, around 3500 BP. The Caquetío Indians, a branch of the Arawak. Speakers of an Arawakan language, arrived in the islands from South America around 500 AD. Archaeological remains of the Caquetío culture have been found at sites northeast of Kralendijk and near Lac Bay. Caquetío rock paintings and petroglyphs are preserved in caves at Spelonk, Onima, Ceru Pungi and Ceru Crita-Cabai. The Caquetíos apparently appeared very tall to the first Spaniards encountering them, for the Spanish name for the ABC islands was las Islas de los Gigantes, 'the islands of the giants'. Remnants of Bonaire's indigenous population can be seen in some of the island's current inhabitants.Spanish period
In 1499, Alonso de Ojeda arrived in Curaçao and a neighbouring island that was almost certainly Bonaire. Ojeda was accompanied by Amerigo Vespucci and Juan de la Cosa. De La Cosa's Mappa Mundi of 1500 shows Bonaire and calls it Isla do Palo Brasil or "Island of Brazilwood". The Spanish decided that the three ABC Islands were useless because they did not have known metal deposits, and in 1515 the Caquetío were enslaved to work in the copper mines of Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola; the total number may have been between 500 and 2,000.Spain colonized Bonaire since 1499 for a period of approximately one century. Likewise, one of the oldest references to the name of the island is found in the archive of the Main Public Registry of the city of Caracas. A document dated December 9, 1595, specifies that Don Francisco Montesinos, Curate and Vicar of "las Yslas de Curasao, Aruba y Bonaire" conferred a power of attorney to Pedro Gutiérrez de Lugo, resident in Caracas, to collect from the Royal Treasury of His Catholic Majesty Don Felipe II, the salary that corresponded to him for his office as priest and vicar of the islands.
In 1526, Juan Martínez de Ampiés was appointed Spanish commander of the ABC Islands. He brought back some of the original Caquetio Indian inhabitants to Bonaire and Curaçao. Ampies also imported domesticated animals from Spain, including cows, donkeys, goats, horses, pigs and sheep. The Spaniards thought that Bonaire could be used as a cattle plantation worked by natives. The cattle were raised for hides rather than meat. The Spanish inhabitants lived mostly in the inland town of Rincon as its geography made it relatively safe from pirate attacks.
Dutch period
The Dutch West India Company was founded in 1602. Starting in 1623, ships of the West India Company called at Bonaire to obtain meat, water and wood. The Dutch also abandoned some Spanish and Portuguese prisoners there, and these people founded the town of Antriol, which is a contraction of Spanish al interior. The Dutch and the Spanish fought from 1568 to 1648 in what is now known as the Eighty Years War. In 1633, the Dutch having lost the island of St. Maarten to the Spanish retaliated by attacking Curaçao, Bonaire and Aruba. Bonaire was conquered in March 1636. The Dutch built Fort Oranje in 1639.While Curaçao emerged as a centre of the slave trade, Bonaire became a plantation of the Dutch West India Company. Salt became a major export product of the island; a small number of African slaves were put to work alongside Indians and convicts, cultivating dyewood and maize and harvesting solar salt around Blue Pan. Slave quarters, built entirely of stone and too short for a man to stand upright in, still stand in the area around Rincon and along the salt pans. The slave population grew in the 1710s when a famine and social unrest on Curaçao caused the Dutch to relocate a large number of slaves to Bonaire. Historically, Dutch was not widely spoken on the island outside of colonial administration; its use increased in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Students on Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire were taught predominantly in Spanish until the late 18th century when the British took Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire; the teaching of Spanish was restored when Dutch rule resumed in 1815.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Netherlands lost control of Bonaire twice, once from 1800 to 1803, and again from 1807 to 1816. During these intervals, the British had control of the neighbouring island of Curaçao and of Bonaire. The ABC islands were returned to the Netherlands under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814. During the period of British rule, a large number of white traders settled on Bonaire, and built the settlement of Playa in 1810.
Emancipation
From 1816 until 1868, Bonaire remained a government plantation. In 1825, there were about 300 government-owned slaves on the island. Gradually many of the slaves were freed and became freemen with an obligation to render some services to the government. The remaining slaves were freed on 30 September 1862 under the Emancipation Regulation. A total of 607 government slaves and 151 private slaves were freed at that time.World War II
During the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II, Bonaire was a protectorate of Britain and the United States. The American army built the Flamingo Airport as an air force base. After Germany invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, authorities declared martial law, and many German and Austrian citizens, as well as Dutch thought to be German sympathizers, were interned in a camp on Bonaire. Some of these remained in this camp for the war's duration, and others were transferred to new camps built on the mainland in the first year of the war. In 1944, Princess Juliana and Eleanor Roosevelt visited the troops on Bonaire.Bonairean sailors made an above-average contribution during World War II. German U-boats tried to eliminate shipping around the Aruba and Curaçao refineries and thus eliminate the island's considerable fuel production for the Allies. Bonairean-crewed ships also took part in these battles. Among the many missing after the war, were the 34 Bonaireans who died on these ships. During hostilities, the site where the Divi Flamingo Beach Resort & Casino now stands served as an internment camp for Germans and Austrians living in the Antilles, mainly because they were distrusted. There were fears they could have sabotaged the giant oil refineries on Aruba and Curaçao that were supplying paraffin to the Allied air fleet.
The camp was in operation from 1940 to 1947. In total, 461 people were interned during this period without trial, most of them completely innocent. Among them were Medardo de Marchena and also the photographer Fred Fischer, then still an Austrian citizen. Many German internees had just fled Nazi violence. But there were also German prisoners of war, some of whom remained after the war. In September 1943, the father of George Maduro, after whom Madurodam is named, asked Queen Wilhelmina to exchange his son for the German internees on Bonaire. The government did not grant the request. After the war, the empty barracks became Bonaire's first hotel: Zeebad.
File:Aankomst van het koninklijk paar op het vliegveld van Bonaire, Bestanddeelnr 252-3827.jpg|thumb|Royal visit of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard in 1955
Post-war
After the war, the economy of Bonaire continued to develop. The airport was converted to civilian use and the former internment camp was converted to become the first hotel on Bonaire. The Dutchman Pierre Schunck started a clothing factory known as Schunck's Kledingindustrie Bonaire, a partial solution for the large female surplus on the island. In 1964, Trans World Radio began broadcasting from Bonaire. Radio Netherlands Worldwide built two shortwave transmitters on Bonaire in 1969. The second major hotel was completed in 1962. Salt production resumed in 1966 when the salt pans were expanded and modernized by the Antilles International Salt Company, a subsidiary of the International Salt Company. Part of the facilities extend into the Caribbean Sea and form the popular dive site known as Salt Pier. The Bonaire Petroleum Corporation oil terminal was opened in 1975 for trans-shipping oil.Politically Bonaire formed part of the Netherlands Antilles from 1954 to 2010; it is now a special municipality within the Netherlands. In 2011 the island officially adopted the US dollar as its currency.