The subject of this study is the influence which Dutch has had on Papiamentu. The first chapter deals with the history of the Benedenwindse Eilanden of the Netherlands Antilles in order to explain the reason for the "mixed" nature of the language. The second chapter is devoted to the influence which the various component parts of the population have had or may have had on the language. It further shows how Papiamentu developed from a pidgin into a Creole and subsequently into an independent language. This growth is demonstrated by statements from writers on the language. The third chapter concerns in particular the Dutch element in Papiamentu. After a short description of the various categories in which Dutch influence is apparent, an analysis is made of the presence of words and expressions from those categories in Ora Solo Baha, a collection of children's stories by Pierre Antoine Lauffer. In this analysis attention is given to the lexicon as well as to syntactic caiques. Words and expressions have been explained not only on the basis of present-day Dutch, but, as far as possible, also in the light of their occurrence in earlier forms of Dutch, the seventeenth-century language, or in the West Frisian and Zealandic dialects, as well as in colloquial Dutch. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate