Summary

This research started with the observation that twentieth-century Dutch-Spanish Caribbean affairs is a highly understudied field within Caribbean Studies. Nevertheless, it is an empirical treasure trunk. Interactions between the Dutch and Spanish Caribbean comprised commercial and industrial affairs, religious missions, transnational cultural – mostly musical – relations, various forms of labor exchange and labor migration – including a state-regulated migration scheme for sex workers – and the involvement of Dutch Caribbean individuals in Garveyism in the Caribbean and the US, in Black international labor union and communist organisations, and apparently also in political and social activism such as the anti-Trujillo movement. 

In my research I follow these alliances and interactions, moving from the geopolitical to the personal, in an attempt to uncover the transnational roots of Caribbean social and communal strengths dynamics. For this research, I am currently supported by a Fulbright Scholarship for which I am now based at City College New York. Within this larger project, I am supported also by the Dominican Studies Institute, for which I will write a Research Monograph on Dutch-Dominican Engagements in a Broader Atlantic Perspective. I envision this monograph to be a stand-alone introduction to twentieth century Dutch-Dominican engagements, and as a stepping stone for further research.