St. Kitts and Nevis History Geograhia

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St. Kitts & Nevis

The peaceful calm of St. Kitts and Nevis--that tranquil atmosphere which in Nevis especially edges toward slumber--suggests nothing of the extraordinary histories of these two islands. For centuries, St. Kitts and Nevis occupied a critical position in the European struggle for the West Indies, combining exceptional wealth as sugar colonies with a vital strategic position as gateways to the Caribbean. As a result, the struggles and conflicts that marked their history are among the most decisive episodes in Caribbean history.

Both St. Kitts and Nevis are volcanic islands, a fact to which they owe their dramatic central mountains, their rather unpredictable geologic history, and their lush tropical vegetation. In fact, St. Kitts' pre-Columbian Carib inhabitants knew their island as Liamuiga, or "fertile land," a reference to the island's rich and productive volcanic soil. Today that name graces St. Kitts' central peak, a 3,792-foot extinct volcano.
As was the case all over the Caribbean, St. Kitts and Nevis were first settled by Arawak and Carib Indians moving up through the islands from South America between five and seven thousand years ago. When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1493, both islands had long been occupied by substantial Indian communities. However, by the early 17th century the inhabitants of Nevis had disappeared--victims of Spanish attacks, European diseases, and, possibly, forced labor on an ill-fated Spanish pearl diving project on Cubagua, an island off the Venezuelan coast.

Until recently it was thought that Christopher Columbus provided both St. Kitts and Nevis with their European names. As the story goes, the Great Navigator dubbed the larger of the two islands St. Christopher, in honor of the patron saint of travelers. Although it may not have been Columbus who named the island, it was almost certainly British sailors who shortened St. Christopher to the familiar St. Kitts. Whatever its origins, the gesture toward St. Christopher makes sense, as the islands' visibility and position--as well as their comforts--made them common first targets for early trans-Atlantic navigators. Captain John Smith, for example, landed on Nevis in 1607 on his way to establish the colony of Virginia. Smith and his companions spent five days resting and relaxing on the island, enjoying Nevis' hot sulfur baths while recuperating from the long passage. Nevis derives its name from the Spanish phrase "Nuestro Senora del las Nieves"--in English, Our Lady of the Snows. Columbus had settled upon St. Martin (as he sighted the island on that saint's feast day), but the permanent halo of white clouds shrouding the island's central peak suggested a snow cap to early Spanish sailors.

St. Kitts' early history, like the island's Carib petroglyphs, is inscribed in the towns, landmarks, and estates of the island itself. Colonization began on St. Kitts in 1623, with the arrival of Sir Thomas Warner, his family, and fourteen others at what is now Sandy Point and their settlement at Old Road Bay. The English were joined in 1625 by French settlers led by Pierre Belain d'Esnambue, who had sought refuge on the island after a losing fight with a Spanish galleon. The two groups wiped out the Carib Indians in a massacre at Bloody Point in 1626, weathered a Spanish attack in 1629, and then turned their attentions to colonizing the islands around them. From St. Kitts, the British settled Nevis, Antigua, Barbuda, Tortuga, and Montserrat, while the French claimed Martinique and Guadeloupe.

By the middle of the century, as St. Kitts & Nevis became increasingly prosperous, intermittent warfare between the French and British took hold. The French exiled the British from St. Kitts in 1664, only to lose it back to them in 1689. France captured the island again in 1706 and lost it once more soon after. Finally, they returned in 1782 to lay seige to the massive British fort on Brimstone Hill, which fell after a heroic defense. St. Kitts was returned permanently to the British in 1783, as part of the Treaty of Versailles.

Nevis, meanwhile, had risen to become the most celebrated sugar colony in the Caribbean. The "Queen of the Caribbees," as the island was popularly known, had been settled in 1628 by a group of 80 English residents of St. Kitts, headed by the tobacco planter Anthony Hilton. A larger group of settlers from England soon joined them, and the island was quickly cleared and developed for tobacco planting. Nevisian tobacco, however, was no rival to that of Virginia, and within a few decades the island turned toward sugar. Despite a small amount of sugar production in the middle of the 17th century, it wasn't until the arrival on Nevis of Sephardic jews who had fled Spanish persecution in Brazil that Nevis really began to flourish. Along with Dutch traders of the time, the refugees brought the Spanish secret of crystallizing sugar, preserved the product for shipping. By the early 18th century, Nevis' sugar industry had made it a fantastically wealthy colony, generating revenues equal to those of a number of North American colonies combined.

Of course, prosperity brought its own problems. First, the island became a magnet for pirates and privateers, who sought to ambush richly-laden merchant ships. In fact, pirates harrassed Nevis until the 19th century, until they finally disappeared along with the island's great sugar wealth. Second, Nevis became so dependent on slave labor that by 1700 about 3/4 of the residents were slaves. Third, and perhaps most important, Nevis' sugar wealth made it an attractive target for other countries--Spain, Holland, and France all made attacks on Nevis. The most consequential were two large French attacks in 1706, at the height of the island's prosperity. The attacks seriously damaged the island, and, all things considered, marked the beginning of Nevis' decline. Sugar production never completely recovered, and although Nevis was soon protected more strongly than ever (by no fewer than 15 fortifications in 1750) there seemed to be less to protect. Poor crop returns and a significant exodus from the island ended Nevis' reign as the Queen of the Caribbean sugar islands.

Nonetheless, conflicts for control of the island lasted until the late 18th century: the Dutch attacked three times, the Spanish once, and the French twice before the Treaty of Versailles finally allowed the islanders a reprieve. The island's rich sugar economy recovered, and social life on the island became notoriously extravagant--even dissolute. Nevis became a kind of 18th-century playground for the rich and famous, with lavish entertainments at the Bath Hotel and the construction of grand estate houses--many of which are now among the Caribbean's finest plantation inns. This was also the era during which Nevis welcomed Horatio Nelson, who no doubt enjoyed the hospitality of both the Bath Hotel and the estate of Fanny Nisbet, his future wife.

However, even by the 1780s the impetus toward the abolition of slavery--and the free labour that made the sugar industry both possible and profitable--was becoming clear. After 1834, when slavery was abolished, the industry diminished rapidly, and with it Nevis's fortunes. Over the course of the nineteenth century life on St. Kitts and Nevis was difficult, as economic inactivity combined with natural disasters frustrated revitalization efforts. In fact, it wasn't until the rise of tourism in the last few decades that St. Kitts and Nevis again gained recognition as pearls of the Caribbean.

Only the fortress at Brimstone Hill remains as a reminder of the uneasy history of these islands. Today, the country is a model of peace and stability in the Caribbean. The Federation of St. Kitts & Nevis, established as an independent nation within the British Commonwealth in September of 1983, is democratically ruled, with an economic focus on tourism, sugarcane, and ecology.

The authors would like to thank Vincent K. Hubbard, in particular, for much of the information about Nevisian history contained in these pages. The history contained here is only a pale sampling of the rich historical picture of Nevis that is provided by his Sword, Ships & Sugar: History of Nevis to 1900.