Aruba

parliamentary representative democratic country

Aruba-Queen Beatrix Airport (AUA/TNCA) Domestic Only, Oranjestad 5km (3miles)

FAruba was acquired by the Dutch in 1636 from the Spanish who discovered the island in 1499, which was the home of the Arubaes, an Arawak tribe from the South American mainland. The Spanish took little interest in Aruba, apart from shipping some of the Arawaks to work in mines on Hispaniola. Conflict in Europe between Spain and Holland resulted in the Dutch seizing the island in 1636, and the Dutch began to colonize Aruba at the end of the 17th century. Poor soil and aridity saved the island from plantation economics and the slave trade. Instead the Dutch left the Arawaks to graze livestock on the parched landscape, using the island as a source of meat for other Dutch possessions in the Caribbean.

The British arrived in 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars but sailed into the sunset in 1816. The island's economy has been dominated by three main industries. A 19th century gold rush giving way a flood of gold-hungry immigrants who arrived from Europe and Venezuela, and mining continued right up until 1916. When the mines became unproductive, Aruba turned to oil refining in a big way. In 1929 the world's largest refinery was built on the south-eastern tip of the island. In1940s, Aruba began to resent its secondary role to Curaçao in the federation known as the Netherlands Antilles (then composed of Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao and Suriname). Calls for autonomy increased over the next 40 years, and in 1986 Aruba finally became an autonomous state within the Kingdom of the Netherlands