Van Oost-Groningen tot Westpunt-Aruba: een Koninkrijk met vele culturen. Identiteit en identifi catie in het Caribisch deel van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden

Abstrakt

The Kingdom of the Netherlands reaches from the most eastern point of the province of Groningen to the most western point of the Island of Aruba in the Caribbean. This transatlantic character of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is often neglected in courses on literature, language and culture of the Netherlands. The six islands in the Caribbean are representative for the diversity and richness of the kingdom and deserve more attention because of their wealth of linguistic diversity, colonial and postcolonial literature and sociolinguistic puzzles. The languages Papiamento and Papiamentu of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao are fascinating creole languages, the Caribbean English of Saba, St Eustatius and St Maarten are a treasure box of linguistic history. The literary tradition of the six islands combines influences from Europe with Caribbean, South-American and African influences, and the postcolonial relations together with the linguistic diversity within the Kingdom of the Netherlands create a unique and fascinating aspect of Dutch Studies. In this contribution, I attempt to depict the way in which these aspects affect identity and identification in the Kingdom of the Netherlands on both sides of the Atlantic.