Netherlands Antilles

The Netherlands Antilles was an awkward country by design: six small islands, scattered across two groups of the Caribbean some 800 kilometres apart, bundled together in 1954 as a single autonomous partner within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The islands shared a flag, a parliament at Willemstad, and the Antillean guilder, but not much else — the ABC islands off Venezuela and the SSS islands near Puerto Rico had little in common, and the shared Antillean government was widely distrusted on the individual islands, each of which wanted a more direct line to The Hague.

The country came apart by its own islands’ choice rather than by war or collapse. Aruba had already pulled out in 1986 to become a separate country within the Kingdom. Referendums in the 2000s showed the rest pulling in different directions: Curaçao and Sint Maarten wanted their own country status, while the smaller Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba preferred to be folded directly into the Netherlands. A 2008 agreement set the terms, and on 10 October 2010 — “10-10-10” — the Netherlands Antilles was simply abolished. Its largest islands became self-governing countries; its smallest became Dutch municipalities, voting in Dutch elections and using the US dollar. There was no successor state to inherit the name, because the country had been a holding arrangement that none of its parts wanted to keep.