Learn more about the history of our island

Why do we actually preserve our history?

In fact, every event is an event from the past. By the time you finish reading this sentence, it’s already over. It is still fresh in your memory now, but in a week, a month or a year, you will most likely have forgotten it. The further back in the past an event lies, the more you need to use aids to remember it. If you want to “retrieve” an event from the past, you have to do research, like a detective, you have to look for clues, small (or large) things that people have left behind from the past. From there, you can “reconstruct” the event, just as a detective solves his “case.” Important traces from the past are archives, but stories from your grandparents, shards from the ground, or customs or songs from the past can also provide many clues.

At the National Archives, we keep the archives of the government, of important people or institutions. All these “clues” can help you answer the questions you ask about the past.

Archives are special forms of information; they are formed during the execution of a process. We call it “process-related” information. It is therefore different from information found in a book or a library. That is “processed” information, information into which an author’s interpretation or thought has been incorporated. The information from an archive is different: it is the primary source, without interpretation. We preserve it to bring an event from the past back to you, precisely with the sources from that time, without “processing” or interpretation by anyone else.

We have selected some topics for you below regarding Curaçaoan history. Also, take a look at our exhibitions on this site or the topics from the Canon of Curaçao. We hope that you will be intrigued to conduct your own research using the primary sources from that time itself. Feel free to drop by; consultation is free, and you will always be helped with your questions.