Some centuries later, the first European landed on Aruban shores. Spanish explorer Alonso de Ojeda is thought to have arrived about 1499. The Spanish promptly exported the Indians to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, where they were put to work in the copper mines.

In 1636, near the culmination of the Eighty Years' War between Spain and Holland, the Dutch took possession of Aruba and remained in control for nearly two centuries. In 1805, during the Napoleonic Wars, the English briefly took control over the island, but it was returned to Dutch control in 1816. Although Aruba continues to exist within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, it functions independently.

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