"Paradise Overseas" presents a tour around the main themes of Dutch Caribbean history and its contemporary legacies. Drawing on wide expertise in Caribbean and Latin American studies, Gert Oostindie strongly posits a refreshing analysis of the Dutch Caribbean in a comparative framework which will be of interest to historians, anthropologists and political scientists alike. Rather than aiming at a comprehensive narrative, he offers a thematic discussion of topics such as the contrasts between Dutch colonization in the Americas and Asia
African slavery, Asian indentured labour and the shaping of plural societies in the Dutch Caribbean
the major contrasts between and within the six Antillean islands and Suriname
the different trajectories of decolonisation and their subsequent costs and benefits
and the changing significance of ethnicity and national identity both in the Dutch Caribbean and its diaspora.