Negotiating tensions: The religious landscape of St. Eustatius,1636

Abstract

The Dutch had a nearly blank slate on which to produce their new colony when they settled the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius in 1636. The colonists sought to create a productive agricultural colony, which would require a structured system of economic production and a means for social reproduction. The Dutch elites strategically situated churches on the island’s landscape to produce St. Eustatius as a social space. There were two key tensions that shaped the Dutch elites' decisions on where to construct religious places on the island landscape: how to maintain the Dutch Reformed Church as the sole public religion while respecting individuals’ right to the freedom of conscience, and how to find the proper balance between capitalist accumulation and Protestant aestheticism. While the Dutch elites hoped that their positioning of religious places would create a stable society, the majority of the population lived this space in a manner different from the Dutch elites’ plan.

Keywords

Space Caribbean religion Henri Lefebvre St. Eustatius

Introduction

For it too often happens that riches bring self-indulgence, and superfluity of pleasures produces flabbiness as we can see in wealth regions and cities (where there are merchants). Now those who sail to distant places are no longer content with home comforts but bring back with them unknown luxuries.

-John Calvin, Commentary on Isaiah 2:12, 6 (in Schama, 1997: 289)

Some historians have described the colonial town as an artificial product, but they forget that this artificial product is also an instrument of production: a superstructure foreign to the original space serves as a political means of introducing a social and economic structure in such a way that it may gain a foothold and indeed establish its ‘base’ in a particular locality.

-Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 1991: 151.

The historical archaeology of Caribbean colonial landscapes has tended to focus on plantation settings and/or spaces in direct resistance to the plantation system. While recently there have been a few studies that have explicitly explored plantations owned by the Dominicans or Quakers (Chenoweth, 2014; Lenik, 2012), the vast majority of these studies have not focused upon the role religion played within these colonies. Yet, religion was a significant element of early modern life and played a major role in structuring how colonial landscapes were produced and experienced. In this paper, we ask what were the cultural logics that structured where religious buildings were placed on the small Dutch island of St. Eustatius and how did people experience this built religious space.

We argue that the Dutch elites on St. Eustatius used the built religious landscape to ameliorate two key tensions in early modern Dutch culture. The first tension was finding a balance between Protestant asceticism and material accumulation. Weber (2002) famously argued that this contradiction would give rise to the “Spirit of Capitalism”. However, as historian Schama (1997) argues, the Dutch did not quickly come to terms with this contradiction, but rather that much of Dutch cultural production during the early modern period focused on resolving this ever present tension. The spatial solutions for this first tension were reflexive. The built religious landscape served as a symbol that affirmed to the Dutch their moral place within the development of modern capitalism. The second tension resulted from finding a way to maintain a stable society while incorporating religious diversity. St. Eustatius had an ever-increasing population of non-Dutch Reformed adherents and many of these people were essential to the island’s prosperity. Yet, the Dutch on the island believed, like many Europeans, that a multiconfessional public was a recipe for social conflict. Therefore, they sought to produce a built religious landscape that highlighted religious homogeneity. This second tension was directly tied to structures of political authority, control, and power. We argue that this aspect of the built religious landscape would be understood as such and that far from a sense of religious homogeneity being created on the island, these churches would be lived as places of exclusion by the enslaved inhabitants of St. Eustatius.

The Dutch elites controlled the distribution of religious buildings to resolve these tensions and produce a stable social space where profits could be achieved. The dynamic nature of St. Eustatius’ religious landscape indicates that these solutions were never perfect. As other factors in colonial life changed, including the island’s basic economic orientation, the balance between these tensions also changed leading to new spatial productions. Yet, while the Dutch elites were focused on solving these two tensions, the spatial practices they created began to align racial, religious, and class identities leading to a social space distinctly different from the one the Dutch elites intended to produce.

The production of social space

When the Dutch West India Company (WIC) settled the small Caribbean island of St. Eustatius, or Statia, in 1636, the only indication of previous human inhabitation were the ruins of a small French fort. The WIC did not have to compete with a previously built environment as they created St. Eustatius as a new social space. This new colony was established for economic gains, but for those economic gains to be successful in the long-term, the Dutch needed to establish a stable social space.

Historical archaeologists within the Caribbean have frequently highlighted how elites used buildings to produce social space. Research on plantations has demonstrated how owners constructed the built environment to maximize profits and discipline their enslaved workforce (e.g. Delle 1998, 2002, 2014; Higman, 1998). These owners created landscapes of power (Delle, 2014) that reinforced ideologies of inequality. These interpretations are top-down and necessarily so, as elites frequently controlled how landscapes were built and maintained. It was the Dutch elites on St. Eustatius who dictated each religious building’s location. They sought to solve two key tensions of Dutch religious culture through the built religious landscape.

Yet, even the best laid plans go awry, and people frequently experience space differently from how it was intended. The major critique of those studies that highlight the production of space is that they give too much credence to the conceptions of space that elite’s hold, as opposed to considering how people lived these physical spaces, and thus produced alternative social spaces (Hicks and Horning, 2006; Wilkie and Bartoy, 2000). These alternative experiences to space may be in the form of resistance but not necessarily so. Others come to space with different cultural values affecting how they understand a space. A Jew on St. Eustatius was unlikely to read the religious landscape through a Protestant lens. People experiencing space differently from how that space was intended does not negate issues of power nor suggest that everyone has an equal say in how space is produced. Rather, the multiple experiences of a space create opportunities for new spatial productions and/or spatial resistances.

To explore the process of spatial production on St. Eustatius, we adopt Lefebvre’s (1991: 38–39) trialectic of spatial practices, representations of space, and representational spaces. Spatial practices, or perceived space, refer to “the various modes of activity through which subjects interact in and with spatial relations, assuring their production and reproduction” (Weiss, 2011: 443). Representations of space, or conceived space, refers to “conceptualized space”, space represented through models and schema (Lefebvre, 1991: 38–39). The intentions of the elites on St. Eustatius were their conceptions of space. Delle’s (1998) work, which also explicitly draws upon Lefebvre, has been critiqued for focusing too heavily on “planters conceptions of space” (De Cunzo and Ernstein, 2006: 260, emphasis original), without providing the same interpretative attention to the other aspects of Lefebvre’s triad (Hauser and Hicks, 2007: 256–260). Representational space, or lived space, is “space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols” (Lefebvre, 1991: 39). The ways their “imagination seeks to change and appropriate” spatial symbols and meanings (Lefebvre, 1991: 39). Representational spaces do not deal with the overt signs that representations convey but rather the ways individuals and groups experience a space. In considering the representational, the multivocality of spaces is highlighted (Bender, 2002; Rodman, 1992). The original production of space may be the product of elite conceptions, but the continued production of social space forms from the dialectic between conceptual and experiential space as played out through material space. On St. Eustatius, the elites hoped that the religious built environment would produce a stable social space lived within their religious ideals, but they failed to align spatial practices with the representational, leading to a social space that was frequently re-defined in unintended ways.

Changing Dutch spaces

The Dutch settlers and elites on St. Eustatius did not approach the island’s landscape free from cultural ideas of space. Rather, their interpretation of this space, and their vision of its potential, were structured through their previous cultural ideals. The Dutch did not seek to re-create the social space that they were familiar with but instead employed their spatial values to produce St. Eustatius as a social space. Two key events of 16^th century Dutch history shaped how the Dutch settlers understood the relationship between space, public space, and the role of religion. These two events were the legislation of freedom of consciousness in 1579 and the emergence of the United Provinces as a central node within an international commercial network after they won independence from the Catholic Habsburgs.

The multiconfessional republic

The Protestant Reformation shook the European World. The schism of Christianity into diverse denominations challenged the long intermeshing of state and church. A multiconfessional populace was a new challenge to traditional models where politics and religion were interconnected (Parker, 2006). Many European leaders believed religious homogeneity was a necessity for a stable community. The Protestant Reformation increased the frequency of confessional differences within a shared communal space. This religious fracturing led to the 16^th century practice of “cuius regio, eius religio”—whose region, their religion (Kaplan, 2007: 104). A region’s ruler chose the region’s religion, with the expectation that everyone within this region would be conforming believers. Cuius regio assumed that each territory would be religiously homogeneous but accepted the possibility that neighboring populations may worship differently.

Religious homogeneity within a territory was the ideal but it was rarely achieved. Thus, various European governments developed practices to cope with religious heterogeneity. One of the most common practices was Auslauf, a practice where religious dissenters would worship beyond the boundaries of communal space, most often defined by city walls. One example of Auslaf was “hedge-preaching”, where individuals would walk beyond the community boundaries to listen to preachers who had established themselves within the neighboring fields and forests, or “hedges”. In 1566, hedge-preachers appeared across the Netherlands preaching various Protestant beliefs outside the Catholic communal spaces of most towns (Kaplan, 2007: 161–171). Auslauf maintained the fiction of a religiously pure and homogeneous society. The spatial practice of leaving the city for worship reinforced the representation of the community as a religiously pure space.

The Dutch re-defined this religious spatial reasoning subtly when they achieved their independence from the Catholic Spanish Habsburgs. In the 13^th article of the 1579 Treaty of Utrecht, the Dutch guaranteed the freedom of conscience for their populace. The 13^th article “meant that one was free to believe as one wanted, but it did not mean that one was free to exercise his or her religion in public” (Knippenberg, 2006: 318). The Reformed Church was declared the public church of the United Provinces and became linked with many forms of social support and governance; although, membership and attendance were not required by law (Israel, 1995: 363). The built environment was remade to reflect the declaration of the Reformed Church as the only public church. The old Catholic parish churches across the newly independent United Provinces were either converted into Protestant places of worship or boarded up (Israel, 1995: 361–363; Kaplan, 2007: 178). Religious diversity was hidden on the Dutch landscape.

The overt religious tolerance of the early Dutch Republic did not erase the long-standing idea that religious homogeneity was necessary for a stable society. “Church allegiance and confessional rivalry were inextricably entwined in early modern times with political life and statecraft” (Israel, 1995: 390). Regents within the United Provinces had a hard time conceiving how “political, social, or moral order could survive if religion was fragmented and in disarray” (Israel, 1995: 372). The balancing of freedom of conscience with the support of a public church was a significant tension defining Dutch life in the early modern period.

The balance between having religious homogeneity and freedom of conscience led to the development of the schuilkerk, or clandestine church. Usually constructed in attics, they would have the outside appearance of a private home or business, while inside they would be organized as a house of worship (Kaplan, 2007: 172–197). These clandestine churches followed the “freedom of conscience” philosophy as there was no outward display of their religious purpose. The schuilkerk created a fiction of communal religious unity. That such a fiction was necessary highlights how the Dutch elite still believed social stability required religious homogeneity.

The 13^th article of the Treaty of Utrecht redefined social space. Religious others were no longer pushed outside the communal walls, but instead hidden behind private doors. Religious homogeneity was conveyed through visibility and the exclusion of the “other” from public space. The Dutch sought to represent a sense of shared religious practices by only having one visible church. All other religions were muted if not forced to be completely invisible on the landscape. The Dutch elites sought to construct social relations through the visible placement of religious places. This tension between freedom of conscience and religious homogeneity, alongside the preoccupation with the visible and the hidden, were part of the cultural schemas that the Dutch settlers on St. Eustatius used to shape the island’s religious built landscape.

The Netherlands as a global actor

Independence for the United Provinces was not just a religious and political claim. It provided an opportunity for the United Provinces to redefine their global position. Before independence, they were on the Catholic Habsburg Empire’s periphery. After independence, the United Provinces became the central hub of a global commercial network. This network connected the United Provinces to other places across the globe and this cosmopolitanism infiltrated the Dutch Republic. Urban ports like Amsterdam became saturated with foreign goods and peoples. These global trade networks generated incredible wealth and the United Provinces became awash in prosperity.

This prosperity brought a new fear to the United Provinces: uncontrolled materialism. The wanton accumulation of goods was in conflict with the asceticism of Protestantism. Schama (1997) evocatively calls this conflict an “embarrassment of riches” and argues that the contradiction between materialism and Protestant morality was a defining feature of Dutch life. Schama (1997: 124) describes the challenge that this new wealth presented the United Provinces: “Without it [wealth] the Republic would collapse: with it, the Dutch could fall prey to false Gods, Mammon and Baal, and engineer their own downfall”. The challenge was to create a society that could include morals and money, accumulation and ascetics, worldliness with homeliness. The people of the United Provinces sought to establish “a set of rules and conventions by which wealth could be absorbed in ways compatible with the godly purposes for which the Republic had been created” (Schama, 1997: 124).

Institutions like the Reformed Church played a key role in dealing with this tension. As one example of a “guardian of the old orthodoxy”, Schama (1997: 371) argues that the Reformed Church was charged to “protect the Dutch from the consequences of their own economic success, just as it was the job of the people to make sure there was enough of a success in the first place to be protected from”. While the Reformed Church could not require attendance, it was still a tool for producing a stable and moral society. The Reformed Church could be used to create a social environment that morally navigated the treacherous waters of rampant accumulation.

St. Eustatius as a colony represented this new global outlook; it was this perspective put into practice. The colony’s primary goal was profits as it was settled by the merchant Dutch West India Company. There is no way to justify the colony as a tool of proselytization since there was no native population when the Dutch arrived. This was colonization with an economic end game. At the same time, it was colonization which means there was settlement. For the community to be structured in a way that economic production could occur, the Dutch needed to create a stable society that could reproduce itself. This meant finding the appropriate balance between the two key tensions of early modern Dutch life: public religion verses private belief, and capitalist accumulation verses asceticism. Both of these tensions concerned the religious landscape. It was these tensions that would shape the early production of religious space on St. Eustatius.

Dutch settlement of St. Eustatius

The Zeeland Chamber of the Dutch West India Company gave Jan Snouck permission in 1635 to colonize an uninhabited island in the Caribbean. After a brief dalliance on St. Croix, Snouck moved on to St. Eustatius. The French had briefly settled on Statia in 1627 but had abandoned this colonial outpost years before Snouck and his men arrived (Goslinga, 1971: 261–263). Outside the ruin of a small French fort, St. Eustatius was free of any visible architecture. Unlike other Dutch places such as Amsterdam, the Dutch elites could deal with the spatial tensions discussed above without having to compete with an established built landscape.

Jan Snouck saw St. Eustatius as an agricultural colony stating that “good tobacco could be planted and vast profits could be reaped” (in Goslinga, 1971: 262). St. Eustatius does offer fertile agricultural land (Figure 1). The island is small but much of this land is arable. There are four major geological areas on the island. On the north end of the island are the remains of an eroded volcano known today as the Boven Hills. This land can be farmed with some terracing. The dormant volcano known as the Quill dominates the island’s southern end. The Quill still retains its steep hillsides and crater limiting agriculture to its wide base. Between these two volcanic hills is a large flat plain known as the kulturvaart (or agricultural plain). This plain has only slight topographical variations and there is no running water to create natural barriers. The kulturvaart has rich volcanic soil and is where most of the plantations were located. The final zone is the shoreline on Oranje Bay. This area, separated from the kulturvaart by a 40 meter cliff, is a narrow (approximately 75 meters wide) spit of sandy soil. This was the main place where goods were loaded on and off of ships. Snouck planned to exploit the rich soils of kulturvaart for tobacco production.

Figure 1.

The main geological areas of St. Eustatius.

The Statian colonists shipped their first tobacco crop to the Netherlands two years after settling the island. The early plantation owners mostly relied upon an enslaved Amerindian workforce. St. Eustatius was infamous in the Caribbean for their organized raids to steal Amerindian slaves (Goslinga, 1971: 263). The tobacco crops were only moderately successful, so the planters on the island followed the lead of their neighbors and began to grow sugarcane. As the 17^th century progressed, the enslaved Amerindian workforce was gradually replaced by enslaved Africans.

The colony’s first thirty years were relatively peaceful, while the next thirty were full of political instability. Between 1665 and 1696 St. Eustatius changed political hands among the French, English, and Dutch seven times (Attema, 1976: 61). Sometimes this change involved the actual physical seizure and razing of the island, while other times the change was simply made on paper. Such political instability retarded economic and demographic growth. During the 17^th century, Statia was a small plantation island producing only a moderate amount of sugar and other agricultural products.

The 18^th century saw St. Eustatius’ fortunes dramatically change. The island became directly controlled by the Dutch West India Company as opposed to the indirect governance via patrons. The island remained within Dutch control between 1696 and 1781 providing a degree of stability to island life. Furthermore, the island residents began to see the shores and not the land as the key area for making profits. The island offered a free market alternative to the restricted mercantile policies of the English and the French and Oranjestad was one of the busiest ports in the Atlantic by the middle of the 18^th century (Tuchman, 1988: 18–23). Here, ships from all over the Atlantic World would trade in a diversity of goods and few markets could offer better prices or more variety (Schaw, 1923: 135–138). The Dutch West India Company embraced this role as a transshipment center by removing nearly all import and export taxes in 1756 (Tuchman, 1988: 21). Island merchants were willing to trade with merchants from all nations, and Benedendorp, or Lower Town, became a regional and Atlantic commercial and information hub. Although the British seized the island in 1781 to disrupt the shipment of arms to their rebelling colonists, this proved just a minor blip in St. Eustatius’ prosperity (Attema, 1976). It was not until 1795 when St. Eustatius’ fortunes took a turn for the worse. In that year, the French seized the island governing Statia for another ten years. In 1805, St. Eustatius was turned over to the British who would retain control of the island until 1825 (Attema, 1976). Both the French and British instituted heavy taxes on imports and exports that effectively curtailed Statia’s merchant economy. By the time the island was returned to the Dutch, the trade routes within the Atlantic had shifted and St. Eustatius had become a small backwater in the Caribbean, whose population largely survived off of subsistence farming, fishing, and small-scale trading.

The Reformed Church

There were two Reformed Churches during the time period discussed in this article (1635–1795), with the second church replacing the first. The second church was not constructed on top of the ruins of the first church but instead erected on a different part of the island’s landscape. In tracing where each of these churches were built and why the change was made, the ways religious places were used to create social space can be detailed.

The First Reformed Church

The First Reformed Church is defined as much by its presence as it is by the absence of other religious buildings upon the early Statian landscape. Following their mandate to support the Reformed Church as the sole public church, the early Dutch elites on the island only constructed a Reformed Church. This church, and its associated burial grounds, would be the only public and visible religious place on the island until the 1730s. The Dutch, with their cultural schema of the visible and the unseen, ensured that only the official state church was represented on the island.

This representation of religious unity was essential for the early Dutch elites. St. Eustatius had a rapidly diversifying population. The two largest groups of outsiders were the enslaved Amerindians and enslaved Africans. Outside of the enslaved laborers, the island began to attract a variety of merchants. There were Jews meeting on the island as early as 1660 (Emmanuel and Emmanuel, 1970: 518). The proximity of St. Eustatius to both French and English islands attracted settlers from both nations. Furthermore, the turbulent history of these early years with St. Eustatius switching political hands between the French, English, and Dutch brought a cosmopolitan flair to the island. Yet, despite such diversity, the Reformed Church remained the sole public church. The representing of St. Eustatius as a Reformed space, and thus a Dutch space, was not so much about symbolizing a shared identity as producing St. Eustatius as a space with a shared religious perspective. This was thought to be necessary for social cohesion and thus essential for the colony’s economic potential.

The desire for a single public church does not explain why the Reformed Church was constructed where it was (Figure 2). The Dutch elites had a relatively blank slate on which to construct their new colony. While there may have been a temporary building used for a church near or in the Fort during the early years, the Dutch did not construct the first major ecclesiastical building directly adjacent to the island’s main fort. Fort Oranje stood atop the cliff overlooking lower town and had a commanding view of Oranje Bay. A church next door would have been clearly visible to all ships entering the Bay and would have linked the public church with the other major sign of the Dutch government, the military. Rather than constructing the church in this commanding position, the first Reformed Church was erected approximately half a kilometer east of the fort on the edges of what would become Oranjestad.

Figure 2.

The religious landscape during the 17^th century.

The elites chose this location to cope with the second tension that defined 17^th century Dutch religious life: the balance between capitalist accumulation and Protestant asceticism. St. Eustatius was established as an agricultural colony. Early colonists believed that the wealth of the island rested within its soils. These early colonists turned their gaze inwards towards the kulturvaart as opposed to outwards towards the seas. The possibility for wealth rested within the plantations and the expression of that wealth tended to be through these plantations. The Reformed Church was therefore placed at the edges of the only city, the location of much of the population, and the space of wealth production, the plantations. The church was situated conspicuously on the kulturvaart to curb an overzealous concentration on material accumulation and remind the planters of their moral and Godly purposes as citizens of the Dutch Republic. While the representation of the island as a religiously homogeneous population may have been seen as necessary to maintaining a stable society, the church situated on the edge of town anchored this space in Dutch morality.

The Dutch used the Reformed Church to address the two key tensions that defined religion within Dutch public space to produce St. Eustatius as a stable social space. Yet, as Lefebvre (1991) warns, such aims, or representations, do not necessarily align with the spatial practices of these spaces nor with the ways that people lived these spaces. The placement of the church was done with a consideration of spatial practices. The church was located along the major roadways that connected the plantations to the city and at the head of the major road into town. For many plantation owners, their route to the ships, government offices, and shipping agents would have brought them past the Reformed Church. The church would have also been visible to many of these plantations. The church bell added to these spatial practices as it rang across the island’s landscape enhancing its physical dominance both visually and aurally. Just as importantly, for those within the churchyard, much of the island’s wide kulturvaart that was littered with plantation homes and slave quarters would have been visible. The connection between religion and economic life was one that was meant to be practiced and sensed, not just represented.

Spatial practices depend on social positioning. Not everyone would have had the same spatial practices with the Reformed Church. For the Dutch elites and Reformed practitioners, the church was the center of religious life. Within the church itself, spiritual life and rebirth were experienced. The burial grounds became the place of final rest and transition to a life beyond. Such practices were an essential part of Reformed faith and helped maintain this religious belief. But for many, such practices were forbidden. The Dutch could not require attendance at the Reformed Church because of the Treaty of Utrecht. Furthermore, the Reformed Church had relatively strict regulations for conversion (De Jong, 1978: 154). The majority of the population never entered within the church’s spiritual inner sanctum. Their spatial practices were limited to the outside walls. They did not connect to the church’s messages of salvation. As such, they would have been aware of the way this church represented a Dutch society, but for them Dutch society included a clear social hierarchy. Church outsiders would not have been able to hold political office. The majority of these outsiders on the island were enslaved, and their experiences of the Reformed Church would have been understood within the context of their enslavement. The Reformed Church was a white space and the Reformed religion became linked with the racial identity of white. The Reformed Church through its spatial practices may have aligned the representation of space with the representational space for the Dutch elites, but for the majority of those on the island, their spatial practices with the Reformed Church reinforced their lived outsider position within the island’s society.

The Second Reformed Church

The first Reformed Church was abandoned before 1745. A lawsuit from that year indicates that several buildings within Fort Oranje had been hosting Reformed services (Attema, 1976: 65). It is likely that these services were being held within the Fort because the Reformed Church had been damaged. The use of the Fort as a temporary residence for Reformed services underscores the interconnections between the colonial government and the Reformed Church. The Dutch elites decided to not restore the damaged building but rather to construct a new church on a different part of the island. The decision to not rebuild in the same location indicates that tradition alone was not governing where the elites were constructing their new church.

The Dutch elites decided to build a new church that better reflected the social relationships of the island rather than reconstructing the old church. In the 17^th century, the inhabitants of the island were looking to the ground itself to produce wealth. However, St. Eustatius was always a second-rate agricultural colony because of its limited rainfall, political instability, and relatively small size. By the second quarter of the 18^th century, the island’s inhabitants realized that their deep harbor and free trading predilections could bring them greater prosperity. Thus, the island’s economic gaze turned from its center to its shores and the population of both Upper Town and Lower Town dramatically increased. If the church was to construct a representation of the ideal Dutch social space, then it needed to be both visible to the majority of the public and in a place that overlooked primary economic activities. For the 17^th century, this meant building the church between the town and the plantations. For the 18^th century, the island administrators constructed the church on top of the cliff overlooking Oranje Bay and Lower Town (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

The religious landscape from the 1730s until 1795.

The new Reformed Church was constructed from local volcanic stone and Bermuda limestone and had a commanding view of Oranje Bay and Lower Town (Figure 4). It was adjacent to Fort Oranje. As ships arrived to the island they would have seen the Dutch flags from the Fort and the bell tower from the church. Together, these represented the island as a Dutch space. They indexed two pillars of the Dutch state: the military and the public church.

Figure 4.

The partially restored Dutch Reformed Church (Photo by Jay R Miller).

The Reformed Church continued its role in attempting to produce St. Eustatius as a moral economic space. The Dutch elites situated the church so it could keep a watchful eye on the economic center of Statian society. If ever there was a place of rampant accumulation then it was Lower Town, St. Eustatius. When the British seized the island in 1781, there were over 200 warehouses in Lower Town. The British auctioned the goods within this area for an estimated three million British pounds (Tuchman, 1988: 97). Lower Town was a haven for merchants from all over the Atlantic and the district’s six hundred buildings were replete with inns, brothels, and taverns. The Reformed Church situated atop the cliff was a looming presence over Lower Town’s activities indicating that this was a moral society.

The Dutch represented St. Eustatius as pious reformed space through the construction of the new Reformed Church. The shift in church location suggests that this representation was not solely for the island inhabitants but also for those trading with the island. The merchants of St. Eustatius during the 18^th century continually pushed the boundaries of what could be considered legal economic activity. They became famous for providing routes for English and French planters to avoid restrictive mercantile policies (Goslinga, 1985: 145–146). The St. Eustatius merchants were experts at smuggling and document forging. Such activities occurred under the watchful eyes of the island Governors, some of whom were the biggest actors in these semi-legal and illegal merchant activities. St. Eustatius gained a reputation amongst the powers of the Atlantic for its dedication to trade and greed. The Reformed Church, visible to passing ships, provided a veneer of legitimacy. A veneer that the Governor’s could use to demonstrate to the directors of the WIC that despite their trading predilections they had not abandoned the WIC’s dictates to support the Reformed Church as the sole public church. The Reformed Church indicated that this island had not fallen totally into a den of commercial iniquity. The Reformed Church was located in this position when the French seized the island in 1795.

The new Reformed Church did not change how most island residents experienced the religious landscape. The elites were still concerned with issues of visibility and they constructed their new church in a place that would be visible to the most people on the island and to the ships approaching Oranje Bay. Yet, like the previous church, only the elites on the island would have worshipped within the inner sanctum. For the enslaved population, this remained a place of exclusion and a place for the white slave owners. The Reformed Church may have been a representation of a religiously homogeneous society, but its spatial practices reinforced social divisions.

Other religious places

In the 17^th century, the Dutch elites were able to use the Reformed Church as a symbol of the island’s religious homogeneity. During this agricultural period, the majority of religious others were enslaved, and any other religious representation was denied. In the 18^th century, St. Eustatius shifted its economic focus to trade. St. Eustatius’ prosperity depended on having merchants from throughout the Atlantic World. These merchants had various religious beliefs and they leveraged their value to the colony for the rights to construct their own places of worship. The island elites permitted the construction of several non-Reformed churches and thus re-defined the nature of the island’s religious landscape. No longer was this a homogeneous landscape where religious difference was hidden, but instead it became a landscape of religious hierarchy where religious otherness was marginalized.

The Jews

The first non-Reformed public religious space on St. Eustatius belonged to the Jewish community. During the 1740s if not earlier, the area directly south of the church was dedicated as the Jewish burial ground. This burial ground likely preceded the construction of the synagogue in 1739, although the earliest surviving tombstone dates to 1742 (Hartog, 1976: 44–45). There are several reasons why Jews were the first non-Reformed religious group to have a sanctioned space dedicated to their religion. First, a number of Jewish merchants settled on the island during the first decades of the 18^th century (Emmanuel and Emmanuel, 1970: 518–528). Second, Amsterdam, Curaçao, and Suriname had large openly practicing Jewish communities setting a precedent for Jews living within Dutch space (Ben-Ur and Frankel, 2011; Cohen, 1991; Emmanuel and Emmanuel, 1970; Swetschinkski, 2004). Third, there were several prominent Jewish merchants in Amsterdam who supported and encouraged Jewish settlement in the Americas (Klooster, 2009). For these reasons, the Jews had sufficient influence to be able to construct a building dedicated solely to their religious practices.

The Jews of the island petitioned the WIC in the 1730s for the right to construct a synagogue. The WIC granted the Jews permission under one condition: that “the divine service of the Jews would not hinder the one of the Christians” (in Hartog, 1976: 5). The stipulation’s logic harkens back to the larger issue of Reformed Church being the sole public church. The WIC Directors feared that the synagogue could disrupt life on the island. A visible manifestation of a religious other could threaten social stability and the potential for the island community to peacefully reproduce. Thus, the synagogue had to be hidden within the urban landscape.

Whether the Jews themselves or the WIC selected the synagogue’s location is unknown. Either way, the location fit perfectly with the WIC’s requirement. The Jews constructed their synagogue within an empty lot off of a small alleyway. The synagogue did not have an entrance to any of the major urban thoroughfares. The synagogue was built within the middle of a city block limiting its visibility. The Jews took this muted presence one step further by covering the synagogue’s floor with white sand. While this white sand may have symbolized the wandering of the Jews, it also had the added benefit of muting the sounds of people ambulating within the building (Miller, 2011, 2013). In this way, the Jews constructed a religious place that minimized disruption to the island’s social space.

The Dutch elites constructed the cityscape so that an individual’s spatial practices (walking through the city, visiting churches) did not disrupt the representation of St. Eustatius as a Dutch Reformed space. The synagogue was not a “schuilkerk” but it was close. Tucked off of a small alleyway, the synagogue’s visibility was limited. The Dutch elites could maintain the fiction that their society was religiously homogeneous. At the same time, they made sure the Jews were reminded of their own marginal position within Statian society by their synagogue’s relatively hidden position. Each walk down the small alleyway was a kinesthetic reminder of their social liminality.

Anglicans and Lutherans

St. Eustatius’ proximity to the English islands of St. Kitts, Nevis, and Montserrat meant that a number of English traded on the island. English merchants constituted a significant minority amongst the free population during the 18^th century (O’Shaughnessy, 2000: 227). These English merchants helped anglicize the island’s population. Most noticeably, English was spoken as frequently as Dutch. The English influence was such that the island directors began to request Reformed ministers who would preach in both English and Dutch (Goslinga, 1985: 263).

The English merchants constructed an Anglican church within Upper Town, Oranjestad. The church’s location in Upper Town spoke to its centrality to the island’s populace. It was more than just a fleeting house of worship constructed within cosmopolitan Lower Town. The placement of the Anglican Church within the settled Upper Town spoke to the permanent presence of the English and their religion.

While the Anglican Church was placed in Oranjestad’s Upper Town, like the synagogue it was not afforded a visible place on Statia’s landscape as it was tucked off a side street. Its presence was known, but it was not obvious. Only those living near the church or visiting the church itself would see it. Most island visitors and residents of the island would not pass by the Anglican Church as they conducted their daily business. Thus, the representation of the island as a Reformed space was not overtly challenged.

The strong links between the Germanic provinces and the merchants of the Dutch Republic were represented on the island. There were fifty-two Lutheran families living on St. Eustatius in 1763 (Goslinga, 1985: 264). They constructed a small church within Upper Town, Oranjestad (Gilmore, 2009). The Lutheran Church, like the Anglican Church, was constructed off of a small side street. Its presence was tolerated but not openly celebrated.

The Dutch elites permitted the presence of Anglicans, Lutherans, and Jews because of their merchant networks. Nevertheless, they sought to minimize the visibility of these religious others on the island’s landscape. The acceptance of these three groups was made easier because they had either rejected the Catholic Church or were not tied to a geopolitical rival. As such, these religious communities were not seen as a significant threat to social stability. It was a different story for Catholics.

The Roman Catholic Church

St. Eustatius was also close to the French territories of St. Martin, St. Barths, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. The trade between the French islands and St. Eustatius was so frequent that the British blockaded St. Eustatius during the Seven Years War in hopes of hurting the French (Pares, 1975: 164). This trade brought a number of Roman Catholics to the island. These French Catholics were probably joined by Dutch Catholics who had immigrated from the southern provinces of the Dutch Republic.

The first evidence of a Catholic Church comes from a 1763 Italian etching titled “Veduta de St. Eustachio” (Il Gazzettiere, 1763). The artist takes the perspective of someone standing on a ship in Oranje Bay. The etching highlights a number of key buildings although few of these buildings are accurately represented on the landscape. In this painting, “La Chiesa Romana Privita” is identified just below the governor’s house and on one of the paths leading down to Lower Town. The inclusion of “Privita” suggests that the church was not public. Unfortunately, the 1763 etching was done at such a scale that individual building features are difficult to identify.

There are two different documents suggesting that there was a private Catholic Chapel on the island during the late 18^th century. Historian Johannes Hartog has indicated that Jan Willem Dijkers owned a private Catholic Chapel in Lowertown sometime before 1800. Dijkers was just thirteen when his mother Elizabeth married Guillame La Combe, a Frenchman, and thus likely Catholic. Dijkers may have converted to his stepfather’s faith (Gilmore, 2013). There is also a 1785 inventory for Elizabeth de Windt that indicates a “kerkhoff” on her property. Elizabeth was married to the Frenchmen Jean Lacouderer (Gilmore, 2013). Unfortunately, a document that links these two chapels or families has not been discovered. It is possible that they are referring to the same chapel or that two different families had private chapels. Either way, the key distinction was that they were both private. The chapel was recognized as part of an individual’s property inventory. The public communal churches such as the Reformed Church or the Anglican Church never show up within personal inventories because they were not owned by individuals. The private Catholic Chapel(s) most likely had no outward distinguishing marks to indicate their religious purposes.

The hypothesis that the first Catholic Chapel existed on private lands and did not have overt religious markings is supported by the 1781 P.F. Martin map. This map was created when the British led by Admiral George Bridges Rodney and Major General John Vaughn seized St. Eustatius in 1781. The commissioned map included many buildings in Oranjestad, as well as plantation houses and the locations of slave quarters. This map has been tested archaeologically and has proven to be mostly accurate. While all other churches are noted on the map, there is no mention of a Catholic Church or Chapel. If the Catholic Church had been public and obvious, then it is likely that the Martin Map would have represented it. The lack of representation suggests the lack of knowledge. The British were at war with the French and therefore it is unlikely that the French citizens on the island would have divulged the location of the church. The admission of the chapel’s presence would have drawn the ire of the Rodney and his men. The Catholic Chapel was similar to the schuilkerk common a century earlier in the United Provinces. While its presence was known, the church did not stand out as a separate building with monumental or ritual architecture. The seen/not seen dichotomy of the private thought/public church duality was maintained.

Other religious groups

There would have been other religions practiced on the island as well; although none of these religions established an official church nor were provided an official burial ground. Other religions would have been practiced behind closed doors. Enslaved Amerindians and Africans were the largest group of religious others on the island and it is certain that they brought with them a variety of religious beliefs. Archaeologists have discovered significant evidence of spiritual activity by enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas (Fennell, 2007; Leone et al., 2005: 584–585; Samford, 2007). St. Eustatius would have been similar. Excavations from a 19^th century free black village have uncovered several offerings—ceramics, faunal, and metallic—set upon an earthen mound (Gilmore, In Press). These are likely spiritual in nature. The impact of these religious beliefs should not be underestimated, but at the same time, it is clear that they were not permitted public displays during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The Treaty of Utrecht may have guaranteed freedom of consciousness to Dutch citizens but it would not have guaranteed the same rights to enslaved individuals. Therefore, while various religious practices may have been occurring on the island, they were not granted a spatial representation on the visible and public landscape.

The other significant religious group during the 18^th century was the Methodists who had a unique impact on the religious landscape. In the latter parts of the 18^th century, Methodists preachers came to the island and spread their version of Christianity. These preachers held a number of revival meetings that were quite popular. It is claimed that the Methodist Bishop Thomas Coke baptized around 140 people upon his second visit to the island (Goslinga, 1985: 264). The visibility of these revivals, and the tendency for Methodists to be abolitionists, brought these preachers and the Dutch elites into frequent conflict. The Dutch elites worried that Methodist preaching would disrupt social stability, particularly within the freed black and enslaved communities (Goslinga, 1985: 264). Therefore, despite the increasing popularity of Methodism amongst the populace during the latter half the 18^th century, no official place was established for a Methodist church. Methodism challenged social stability and threatened to disrupt the slave system upon which St. Eustatius’ economic activities and social organization were reliant. The Dutch elites could not outlaw Methodist belief on the island because of the Treaty of Utrecht, but they could ensure that the Methodist had no physical marker on the landscape. The hope was that the denial of both a Methodist representation and spatial practices would prevent the spread of what was seen as a subversive theology. The Dutch followed their tradition of controlling the seen and unseen in an attempt to quell the Methodists and continue the production of St. Eustatius as a stable social space.

Conclusion

The early modern period was one of transition and everyone including plantation owners, merchants, and enslaved workers were seeking to understand “their place in a rapidly transforming world” (Mitchell, 2000: 117–119, emphasis original). This place during the early modern period had to include religion for the Dutch settlers. These settlers brought with them two key tensions that concerned religion: the balance between accumulation and asceticism and how to support the Reformed Church as the public church while including religious others. The Dutch used the built religious environment as a means of solving these tensions and producing the new colony as a stable space.

In regards to the first tension, the Reformed Church served as “collective mirror(s)” (Lefebvre, 1991: 220) providing the Dutch an image of their ideal self, indicating that their accumulation was still within the purview of moral rectitude. They situated the Reformed Churches so that they overlooked the centers of wealth production. During the 17^th century, this reflection was almost entirely internal as the church next to the kulturvaart signaled to the plantation owners that this was a Godly space. In the 18^th century, the church was a symbol both to the Dutch on the island, but also to the people arriving and trading on its shores. This was a place that still valued its Protestant roots.

The second tension of early modern Dutch life on St. Eustatius was balancing the belief that a stable society required religious homogeneity and the increasing diversity of religious beliefs that the island’s economic desires brought to the island. In the 17^th century, the majority of religious others were enslaved and therefore could be overtly denied any rights to religious practice. The religious homogeneity of Statia was represented through its sole visible ecclesiastical building. The merchant turn of the 18^th century relied upon traders of various religious backgrounds. These merchants became important players in the island’s prosperity and the island elites permitted them to construct religious places. These places were forced into the margins of Oranjestad’s urban fabric but they were present. No longer was homogeneity of religion represented but now a hierarchy of religions was present on the island, with the Reformed Church sitting on top. The church had become a sign of social identity marking the Dutch as those in political power.

This notion of hierarchy brings the conversation back to representational space. The Dutch never aligned the representational with the representation of space for most of the people on the island. For the enslaved population, from which the vast majority of Statians are descended today, these churches were always spaces of exclusion. The Reformed Church may have symbolized homogeneity to the Dutch settlers, but it was also a tool of producing social differences. Those that lived as outsiders, as repressed on the landscape, ended up identifying with the religions that were also suppressed on the landscape: Methodism and Catholicism. They embraced the religions that challenged the stable social space that the Dutch elites attempted to create. In the 19^th century, these two churches would include the majority of the population, while the Reformed Church faded into obscurity. The religions denied a place on the island were embraced by those denied their freedom, and eventually these places moved from the shadows into the center of Statian life. The religious landscape produced by the island elites was more concerned with the representation as opposed to the representational, and thus St. Eustatius never became a Dutch Reformed space.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Board of Directors from the St. Eustatius Center for Archaeological Research (SECAR) and all of the volunteers through the years. Their excitement and support cannot be thanked enough. Funding for this project came from the SECAR and the Department of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary. Rania Sweis’s comments on an early draft were incredibly helpful. We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for the insightful comments that pushed us to be better. Both authors thank their families for all their support. As always, all mistakes are the authors’ own.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding for this project was provided by the St. Eustatius Center for Archaeological Research and the Department of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary.

Derek R Miller is currently a Visiting Lecturer of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Richmond. His research explores how diasporic peoples create meaningful places within the early modern Caribbean. He completed his dissertation, ‘“A Medley of Contradictions”: The Jewish Diaspora in St. Eustatius and Barbados,’ at the College of William and Mary in 2013. He has received fellowships from the American Jewish Archives and the John Carter Brown Library and has published in the Journal of Post-Medieval Archaeology and the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society.

R Grant Gilmore III is the Director of the undergraduate program in Historic Preservation and Community Planning at the College of Charleston and holds the Addlestone Chair in Historic Preservation. He was co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Caribbean Archaeology and has published widely on archaeology and heritage management in the Caribbean.

References

Attema

(1976) St. Eustatius: A Short History of the Island and its Monuments, Holland: De Walburg Pers Zutphen.

Bender

(2002) Time and landscape. Current Anthropology 43(S4): S103–S112.

Ben-Ur

Frankel

(2011) Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries and Synagogues of Suriname: Essays, Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press.

Chenoweth

(2014) Practicing and preaching Quakerism: Creating a religion of peace on a slavery-era plantation. American Anthropologist 116(1): 94–109.

Cohen

(1991) Jews in Anther Environment: Surinam in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century, New York: E.J. Brill.

De Cunzo

Ernstein

(2006) Landscapes, ideology, and experience in historical archaeology. In: Hicks

Beaudry

(eds) The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 255–270.

De Jong

(1978) The Dutch Reformed Church in the American Colonies, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Delle

(1998) An Archaeology of Social Space: Analyzing Coffee Plantations in Jamaica’s Blue Mountains, New York: Plenum Press.

Delle

(2002) Power and landscape: Spatial dynamics in early nineteenth-century Jamaica. In: O’Donavan

(eds) The Dynamics of Power, Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, pp. 341–361.

10.

Delle

(2014) The Colonial Caribbean: Landscapes of Power in Jamaica’s Plantation System, New York: Cambridge University Press.

11.

Emmanuel

(1970) History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles Volume 1 & 2, Cincinnati, OH: American Jewish Archives.

12.

Fennell

(2007) Crossroads and Cosmologies: Diasporas and Ethnogenesis in the New World, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

13.

Gilmore RG (2009) St. Eustatius Lutheran Church SE-231: Excavation August 2006. Report, St. Eustatius Center for Archaeological Research, Netherlands Antilles.

14.

Gilmore RG (2013) A Colonial Caribbean Roman Catholic Church on St. Eustatius. Report, St. Eustatius Center for Archaeological Research, Netherlands Antilles.

15.

Gilmore

(In Press) The Congo free black village and burial ground on St. Eustatius. In: Ahlman

(ed.) Out of the Ordinary: Historical Archaeologies On and Beyond Caribbean Plantations, Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

16.

Goslinga

(1971) The Dutch in the Caribbean and the Wild Coast 1580-1680, Assen: Van Gorcum.

17.

Goslinga

(1985) The Dutch in the Caribbean and in the Guianas 1680-1791, Dover: Van Gorcum, Dover.

18.

Hartog

(1976) The Jews and St. Eustatius, Aruba: De Wit Stores.

19.

Hauser

Hicks

(2007) Colonialism and landscape: Power, materiality and scales of analysis in Caribbean historical archaeology. In: Hicks

McAtackney

Fairclough

(eds) Envisioning Landscape: Situations and Standpoints in Archaeology and Heritage, Walnut Creek, CA: Left Cost Press, pp. 251–274.

20.

Higman

(1998) Montpelier Jamaica: A Plantation Community in Slavery and Freedom, 1739-1912, Kingston: University of West Indies Press.

21.

Hicks

Horning

(2006) Historical archaeology and buildings. In: Hicks

Beaudry

(eds) The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 273–292.

22.

Il Gazzettiere Americano Contenente Un Distinto Ragguaglio Di Tutte Le Parti Del Nuovo Mondo Della Loro Situazione, Clima, Terreno, Prodotti, Stato Antico E Moderno, Merci, Manifatture, E Commercio. (1763) Volume Primero. In Livorno per Marco Caltellini all’Insegna della Verita.

23.

Israel

(1995) The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806, New York: Oxford University Press.

24.

Kaplan

(2007) Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

25.

Klooster

(2009) Networks of colonial entrepreneurs: The founders of the Jewish settlements in Dutch America, 1650s and 1660s. In: Kagan

Morgan

(eds) Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantalism, 1500-1800, Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, pp. 33–49.

26.

Knippenberg

(2006) The changing relationship between state and church/religion in the Netherlands. GeoJournal 67(4): 317–330.

27.

Lefebvre

(1991) The Production of Space, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

28.

Lenik

(2012) Mission plantations, space, and social control: Jesuits as planters in French Caribbean colonies and frontiers. Journal of Social Archaeology 12(1): 51–71.

29.

Leone

LaRoche

Babiarz

(2005) The archaeology of Black Americans in recent times. Annual Review of Anthropology 34: 575–598.

30.

Martin

(1781) St. Eustatia Topographically Drawn & Humbly Dedicated to his Excellency John Vaughan Commander in Chief of his Majestys Forces in the West Indies, Ann Arbor, MI: William L. Clements Library.

31.

Miller

(2011) Scattered synagogues: An archaeological exploration of diasporic community creation. Post-Medieval Archaeology 45(2): 357–362.

32.

Miller D (2013) “A medley of contradictions”: The Jewish diaspora in St. Eustatius and Barbados. PhD dissertation, College of William and Mary, USA.

33.

Mitchell

(2000) Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

34.

O’Shaughnessy

(2000) An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

35.

Pares

(1975) Colonial Blockade and Neutral Rights 1739-1763, Philadelphia, PA: Porcupine Press.

36.

Parker

(2006) Paying for the privilege: The management of public order and religious pluralism in two early modern societies. Journal of World History 17(3): 267–296.

37.

Rodman

(1992) Empowering place: Multilocality and multivocality. American Anthropologist 94(3): 640–656.

38.

Samford

(2007) Subfloor Pits and the Archaeology of Slavery in Colonial Virginia, Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press.

39.

Schama

(1997) The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, New York: Vintage Books.

40.

Schaw

(1923) Journal of a Lady of Quality; Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the years 1774 to 1776, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

41.

Swetschinkski

(2004) Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam, Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.

42.

Tuchman

(1988) The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution, New York: Ballantine Books.

43.

Weber

(2002) The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism and Other Writings. Translated by Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells, New York: Penguin.

44.

Weiss

(2011) Making pigs local: Discerning the sensory character of place. Current Anthropology 26(3): 438–461.

45.

Wilkie

Bartoy

(2000) A critical archaeology revisited. Current Anthropology 41(5): 747–777.

Negotiating tensions: The religious landscape of St. Eustatius,1636–1795

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

The production of social space

Changing Dutch spaces

The multiconfessional republic

The Netherlands as a global actor

Dutch settlement of St. Eustatius

The Reformed Church

The First Reformed Church

The Second Reformed Church

Other religious places

The Jews

Anglicans and Lutherans

The Roman Catholic Church

Other religious groups

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

References