St Vincent and the Grenadines historical timeline

Origins

The Kalinago called the main island Hairouna, and they held it longer than almost anywhere else in the Caribbean — European settlement was resisted successfully into the eighteenth century. Africans who survived shipwrecks or escaped from neighbouring islands intermarried with them, producing the Garifuna, a distinct people who controlled much of Saint Vincent. Britain took formal possession in 1763 and spent thirty years failing to hold it.

Turning points

The Second Carib War of 1795 to 1797 ended with the defeat of the Garifuna under Chief Joseph Chatoyer, and the British then deported some five thousand survivors to an island off Honduras. Their descendants live along the Central American coast today, and Garifuna language and music are on the UNESCO intangible heritage list — a culture that survives mainly in exile. Sugar and slavery followed, abolished in 1834, then Portuguese and Indian indentured labour. The La Soufrière volcano has shaped the island repeatedly: the 1902 eruption killed around 1,600 people on the same day Mont Pelée destroyed Saint-Pierre, and the 2021 eruption forced the evacuation of the entire northern third of the country. Independence came on 27 October 1979, three months after the volcano had erupted again.

Influential people

Joseph Chatoyer, the Garifuna chief killed in 1795 and now the national hero, with his own public holiday. Robert Milton Cato, the first prime minister. James Mitchell, who ran the country for sixteen years and built the banana and tourism economy. And Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister since 2001 and one of the more outspoken voices in Caribbean diplomacy.

Cultural evolution

Vincentian Creole English is the everyday language. Vincy Mas, the carnival, runs in late June and early July rather than before Lent, because the sugar crop used to make February impossible. The Grenadines — a chain of small islands running south towards Grenada — have their own sailing and boat-building traditions, and Bequia holds one of the last legal aboriginal whaling quotas in the world, limited to a handful of animals taken from open boats. And the botanic garden in Kingstown, founded in 1765, is the oldest in the western hemisphere; it holds a breadfruit tree grown from the stock Captain Bligh finally delivered in 1793.

Present-day significance

Bananas have given way to tourism and offshore services, with the Grenadines drawing yachts and the mainland much less developed. The 2021 eruption set the economy back severely and recovery is continuing. Volcanic risk and hurricane exposure together make this one of the more physically precarious countries in the region.