The island was spotted by Christopher Columbus on St Vincent’s Day, but he didn’t linger. In St Vincent, as in Dominica, the Caribs defended their territory fiercely. Neither English nor French made any serious attempts at colonisation until the middle of 18th century. Finally, in 1763, the English set foot ashore but were soon ousted by the French; however, the island became British again in 1783 under the Treaty of Versailles. Meanwhile a new race of people had emerged: the ‘Black Caribs’ had resulted from interbreeding between native Caribs and slaves whose ships had been wrecked on the coast. These ‘Black Caribs’ proved willing to defend their freedom as fiercely as their Amerindian cousins. In 1795 the French sought to make an alliance with them in order to get them to push the English back into the sea, but the colonisers offered stubborn resistance and ended by winning. For the most part the Black Caribs were deported to Honduras. However, those who escaped that fate left a genetic legacy to the people of St Vincent which is still visible in some faces. The French are recalled in many village names and in the names of coastal features. There’s also a tie between this island and distant Tahiti. In his new ship Providence, after the mutiny on the Bounty, the famous Captain Bligh brought more than five hundred breadfruit trees from Polynesia to St Vincent. The trees’ fruit ended up pretty much sustaining the plantation slaves and was soon in cultivation throughout the Antilles.

Another event is more sadly remembered: on 6 May 1902, in the island’s north, La Soufrière erupted causing 2,000 deaths. It was a catastrophe but was soon forgotten when two days later Mont Pelée incinerated 30,000 Martiniquais. Throughout the colonial period and up to the preent day the island has survived on the growing of bananas and through market gardening. St Vincent became an associated state of the Commonwealth in 1969 and began to develop a tourist industry. The island has no international airport, but does exercise sovereignty over the larger part of the splendid Grenadines. Two events of importance took place in 1979. La Soufrière suddenly erupted, both causing a more general upset and temporarily dislocating the economy. Then, in October that year, St Vincent attained full independence. Agriculture remains the most important part of the economy, thanks to the very fertile volcanic soil, and is split between agribusiness and peasant smallholdings. For all the efforts of the authorities tourism remains relatively lightly developed in St Vincent, unlike in the Grenadines. One reason is that the terrain is precipitous and runs down to a few grey sand beaches. Therefore, apart from a few state-run establishments on the S coast, the island has little by way of a hotel industry or major tourist complexes.