Book Review: St. Eustatius Historical Walking Tour Guide

A few months ago, I was gifted St. Eustatius Historical Walking Tour Guide, written by archaeologists Gay Soetekouw and Joanna K. Gilmore, and published by the St. Eustatius Historical Foundation in 2007. This tropical island is also known as Statia and located in the Caribbean Sea. While I have no plans to visit in-person in the near future, I did enjoy a rainy Saturday morning exploring on Google Maps while listening to cheerful island music and using the book to learn history.

St. Eustatius has similarities to other Caribbean islands, including the Dominican Republic, which I have visited. While currently part of Netherlands Antilles, making it a Dutch colony, the island was also colonized by Spain, England, and France. Due to this lengthy political turmoil, the people who call the island home come from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. Places of worship on the walking tour route included the remains of the Dutch Reformed Church and Synagogue Honen Dalim (both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews lived on the island despite antisemitism under English leadership until heavy taxes in the early 19^th century forced them to leave), along with an active Roman Catholic church for Dutch residents and Bethel Methodist Church for Black residents.

Since the island was susceptible to attack, forts were built along its shores. The littler structure reminded me of the forts along the Malecón de Santo Domingo, while the larger Fort Oranje seemed more similar to Fortaleza San Luis in Santiago de los Caballeros, Fortaleza de San Felipe in Puerto Plata, and Fortaleza Ozama in Santo Domingo. I love a good fort. Between the military conflict and the black market trading, Statia was not always a very nice place. Locales such as the Old Gin Shop and the Rum Shop, along with the people who tended to be found there, gave the island a bad reputation.

My favorite story was about sailors from the young United States who arrived at the island beginning in November 1776. Dutch merchants established a “diplomatic and trading relationship” with the Americans right away, but this ended with the capture of the island by British naval forces in 1780. Nonetheless, a portrait of Dutch colonial governor Johannes de Graaff hangs in the New Hampshire State House in Concord, NH. Using the virtual tour of the state house, I found him almost immediately, albeit with the anglicized name John Degraff.

This book is a great way to learn the basics St. Eustatius history. I appreciated the maps and the colorful photographs throughout the book, although I wished the maps had been placed at the beginning rather than the spread across pages 30 and 31, page 48, and page 57, which made navigation more confusing. A few phrases in the book were slightly dated, and at least one building seemed to no longer exist, so an update might be helpful. While this book has a fairly niche audience, it served its purpose just fine for me.

Abby Epplett’s Rating System

Experience: 7/10

Accessibility: 5/10