Former possessions of the Netherlands in the Caribbean. It was established as a result of the transformation of the Netherlands' colonies in the Caribbean Sea. The latter wished to maintain their relationships with the former metropolis. In 1954, the Charter of the Kingdom of the Netherlands was adopted, according to which parts of it became the Netherlands itself - a state in Western Europe, another part being former colonial possessions referred as “countries”. Among the latter - the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean Sea. In 2010, it split into several territorial entities, two of which - Curaçao and Sint-Martin - were given the status of separate autonomous entities ("countries") within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Curacao and Sint-Martin (the Netherlands, in this case, ruled over part of the island, the other belonged to France) are located at different ends of the Antilles archipelago, the distance between them is more than 1000 kilometers. The core industry of Curacao and Sint-Martin is tourism. The level and quality of life on these islands is quite high for Central America and comparable to the Netherlands itself.
Most of the inhabitants of the islands are of Afro-Caribbean origins. The population is characterized by multilingualism with English and Spanish playing the most significant role. However, there are also vast differences: a high proportion of Protestants live in Sint-Martin, a substantive number of recent settlers from the Netherlands (mainly pensioners) moved to Curacao, and so forth. Unlike Sint-Martin, in Curaçao, the issue of gaining independence is still quite salient on the political agenda.