Negotiating tensions: The religious landscape of St. Eustatius, 1636–1795

The Dutch had a nearly blank slate on which to produce their new colony when they settled the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius in 1636. The colonists sought to create a productive agricultural colony, which would require a structured system of economic production and a means for social reproduction. The Dutch elites strategically situated churches on the island’s landscape to produce St. Eustatius as a social space. There were two key tensions that shaped the Dutch elites' decisions on where to construct religious places on the island landscape: how to maintain the Dutch Reformed Church as the sole public religion while respecting individuals’ right to the freedom of conscience, and how to find the proper balance between capitalist accumulation and Protestant aestheticism. While the Dutch elites hoped that their positioning of religious places would create a stable society, the majority of the population lived this space in a manner different from the Dutch elites’ plan.