The Dutch soon became leaders in the international slave trade. Taking over major Portuguese trading posts on the west coast of Africa, the WIC purchased enslaved Africans and transported them to Curaçao and Brazil, where they were sold to wealthy plantation owners from across the Americas.

Curaçao became one of the largest slave depots in the Caribbean. By the time the last slave galleon arrived in the harbor in 1788, the WIC had transported some 500,000 Africans to slavery.

After the horrendous trans-Atlantic trip the slaves were kept to recuperate for several months in two camps, Sòrsaka and Chinchó Grandi (present day Groot St. Joris), before being sold at a depot at Asiento (now located on the property of the oil refinery). Nothing remains to mark these sites today.

Relatively few enslaved Africans remained on Curaçao.

Because of its dry climate, the island never developed large scale plantations. By 1700 there were about 1,500 slaves working on WIC plantations around Curaçao.

Instead of major cash crops such as sugar, coffee, and tobacco, they raised food for local consumption and to feed the thousands of slaves awaiting transshipment elsewhere. Typical crops included beans, sorghum and corn; there was also some small scale livestock herding. Some of the more prosperous plantations exported lumber, indigo and cochineal dyes to Europe.

The Dutch were above all traders, not farmers, and usually chose to invest their profits back into lucrative sugar plantations elsewhere. After initial attempts at agriculture gave poor results the plantations became primarily prestigious country houses for high level WIC employees. Although they were not fabulously wealthy landed gentry, plantations owners did enjoy a high local status.

The island's largest slave uprising began on August 17, 1795 when about fifty slaves on the Kenepa plantation rose up under the leadership of Tula and Carpata; they were later joined by over a thousand more from neighboring plantations.

The leaders had been influenced by news about major slave uprisings elsewhere in the Caribbean, as well as the ideas of human liberty put forth in the French Revolution and the recent independence of Haiti, the world's first majority black country.

The revolt spread across the island and lasted several weeks. One group defeated troops at Port Marie, another hid out in the foothills of St. Christoffel. The leaders were eventually captured and executed at the Rif, behind the present day Holiday Beach Hotel. Today a statue and small park mark the site.

Following the abolition of the slave trade the island sunk into a century of relative economic decline. When slavery itself was abolished in 1863 fewer than 7,000 people received their freedom.

However, for many enslaved Curaçaoans, freedom was merely a declaration. Most stayed on in the fields as share croppers, known locally as the "paga tera" (pay for the land) system. In time, some freed blacks established themselves as independent artisans and small scale traders.

When former slaves and their descendants left the countryside they created a dynamic urban culture in the small alleyways of Otrobanda.