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However, during the 17th and 18th centuries St. Eustatius was known in most every European and American household due to the massive international trade that transpired on this island. After 1750, over 3,500 ships a year from Europe, Africa and the Americas landed here earning the island's nickname--The Golden Rock. Almost 20,000 merchants, slaves and plantation owners were crowded on this little speck measuring only 8 kilometres by 4 kilometres (Attema 1976). Merchants from the Netherlands, France, Britain, the American Colonies, Spain and Denmark all mixed in a peaceful international emporium for free trade not to be found anywhere else in the Caribbean. To facilitate this trade, over 600 warehouses were built along the shore below Oranjestad, its main city. The island was so important that it changed hands among the Dutch, English and French 22 times over two centuries, until the Dutch permanently wrested control in the early 19th century.
The sovereignty of the United States was first recognised here when on November 16, 1776 a salute was fired from Fort Oranje in reply to a salute by the brigantine Andrew Doria. The merchants on St. Eustatius provided much of the arms, gunpowder and ammunition used by the rebels in the American Revolution and as a result experienced the full wrath of the English Navy and Marines under Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney in 1781. The largest booty captured anywhere during the Colonial Period was the result: a fleet loaded with over £5,000,000 was sent back to England. Some even believe that Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island was likely based on stories he heard about St. Eustatius (Ayisi 1992). With trade activity on this scale, one can well imagine the significance of the archaeological remains to be found on the Golden Rock.
The sleepy island remained quiet and largely forgotten until the latter half of the twentieth century when historians, anthropologists and archaeologists have attempted to (To continue story click here)
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