St Vincent is believed to have been named by Christopher Columbus because he first sighted the island on January 22, 1498 St Vincent's Day. Long before he 'discovered' the island, however, it had been settled by the peaceful Ciboney who had paddled their way north in their dugout canoes from their original homelands in South America. The Cibonet part of the Arawak Amerindian race, are believed to have first landed on St Vincent around 5OOOBC and there was a sizeable population about the end of the first century AD. Their peace was shattered by the warlike Caribs, also from South America, who had a fearsome reputation. They arrived about 1OOOAD, and by the time the first Europeans arrived, the Caribs dominated the islands. It was reported that the Caribs were cannibals and feasted on the bodies of prisoners, and while there is no evidence to support this, it might explain why Europeans gave the island a wide berth for much of the next 200 years. There was also little need to colonise the island at first because the French and British were more interested in fighting over St Lucia just to the north. The French tried to establish a settlement in 1626, but they were ousted by the English the following year, after the island had been granted to the Earl of Carlisle by Charles I. In the following years there were many attempts to settle the island by the Dutch, English and French but most failed because of Carib hostility. Among the first successful settlers from across the Atlantic were Africans, slaves who were shipwrecked off Bequia in 1675. They managed to swim ashore in the Grenadines and many then made their way through the islands to St Vincent where they settled, with many marrying the native Caribs. The descendants of these Black-Caribs, as they were known, still live on St Vincent. The French had again established a small settlement on St Vincent in the 1720s at the request of the native Caribs who thought that the Black Caribs were becoming too dominant. The French introduced the first African slaves to work their plantations. The Black Caribs, to avoid capture and a return to slavery, moved into the hills. They fiercely resisted attempts to dislodge them, and tales of their opposition spread through the islands, encouraging many slaves to escape and try to join them. While some did make it to St Vincent, most perished trying to cross the dangerous seas in makeshift boats and rafts. In 1748 the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed between the British and French and this was intended to bring peace to the eastern Caribbean. Rather than fight over the islands, it was agreed that St Lucia, St Vincent and Dominica be declared neutral territory. The peace, however, was short lived and the island changed hands several times as the two nations fought over possession. In 1762, during the Seven Years' War, the British General Robert Monckton captured St Vincent and the Treaty of Paris in 1763, ceded it to Britain. The British immediately set about settling the island, despite opposition from the Caribs who refused to accept their rule. The next few decades were a turbulent time in St Vincent's history with constant battles between the British and the Caribs, who conducted a highly successful guerrilla war. This was the period of the First Carib Wars. In 1779 the French who were supporting the American colonies in their War of Independence, attacked St Vincent and overran the island with hardly a shot being fired. The French force landed in three warships, and their intelligence was obviously good, because all the soldiers from the garrison which should have been protecting Kingstown had been transported to the north of the island to help gather the harvest on the Governor's plantation. It is also reported that the officer in charge of the soldiers took with him the keys to the gun battery, so that even if someone had wanted to man the guns, they could not have gained access to them. The French remained in control until the Treaty of Versailles in 1783 which restored the island to Britain again. Over the next few years, confrontations between the British and Caribs increased, leading to the Carib uprising in 1795, the Second Carib War. The French Revolution had brought turmoil to the French-speaking West Indies, and all slaves working on estates on the islands had been given their freedom albeit temporarily as slavery was reintroduced when it was realised there was no one to work the estates for the pittance the owners were prepared to pay. French militants from Martinique and Guadeloupe, and their newly freed slaves, backed the Caribs in their rebellion. The Caribs attacked the plantations, and it is said that many estate owners met horrible deaths being crushed to death in their own sugar cane presses. The Caribs conducted a fierce campaign. Their numbers were split into two forces, one led by Duvall and which quickly stormed down the east coast destroying all the plantations it overran, and the other, led by Carib chieftain Chatoyer, which fought its way down the west coast but sparing most of the plantations. The two armies met in the south and under the command of Chatoyer, took up positions on the hills overlooking Kingstown where the retreating British troops had taken shelter. The whole island, apart from Kingstown, had fallen to the Caribs. The local militia backed by a strong force of British troops, however, crept out of Kingstown at night and made a surprise dawn attacked on the Carib positions on Dorsetshire Hill. The attack was led by Major Alexander Leith who is said to have killed Chatoyer in hand-to-hand combat. Chatoyer was said to have been wearing a silver gorget, a piece of throat armour, personally presented to him by Prince William, later King William IV, during his visit to the island. With their chieftain slain, many of the Black Caribs retreated again to the densely wooded interior. Fighting continued for several months but resistance was slowly and harshly crushed. Many of their settlements had been stormed and razed to the ground, and their fields and crops were destroyed. In 1796 General Abercromby delivered an ultimatum to the Caribs which was surrender or be wiped out. Almost 5,000 Caribs gave themselves up, and nearly all of these were deported to Roatan, one of the Bay Islands off Honduras and Belize, where there is still a large community today. Major Leith earned promotion to Colonel and a plaque in his honour was placed in the Anglican Cathedral, while after Independence, Chatoyer was declared a National Hero. With Emancipation in 1834 all slaves in the British colonies were freed, although they all had to serve an 'apprenticeship' in which they agreed to continue to work free of charge for their old owners for a further four years. Once this apprenticeship was over, most of the freed slaves started to farm for themselves on small plots that they cleared from the forest. This led to a shortage of labour to work on the estates, largely producing sugar cane, Sea Island cotton and arrowroot, and so Portuguese and East Indian labourers were imported as indentured workers in the second half of the nineteenth century. Again, many of these indentured workers agreed to work for free in return for board and lodging, and the promise of a grant of land at the end of their commitment. A census conducted in 1891 found that of the 41,054 population, lust over 3,000 were whites and Hindu coolies, the rest being Negroes and people of mixed blood'. Kingstown had a population of 6,000. As sugar beet was planted widely throughout northern Europe in the late nineteenth century, the price of sugar cane crashed, and St Vincent suffered a long depression, not helped by the hurricane which hit the island in 1898 and the volcanic eruption in 1902 which wiped out almost all agricultural production in the north of the island, and claimed more than 2,000 lives. Agricultural exports which were worth £166,753 in 1883 had fallen in value to £81,837 in 1888. Economic recovery was slow although St Vincent became a leading exporter of bananas and arrowroot, the mainstay of its twentieth-century agriculture. In 1958 St Vincent became a member of the West Indies Federation, it received its new constitution in 1960, and became a State in Association with Britain, responsible for its own internal affairs, on October 27, 1969. St Vincent has been a member of the Caribbean Free Trade Area since July 1968. In 1972 plans were put forward for a Federated State of St Vincent, St Lucia and Grenada, but these failed to materialise, and on 27 October 1979, St Lucia and the Grenadines gained full independence. The Government was established as a constitutional monarchy and became a member of the Commonwealth. The first post-independence elections were won by the Labour Party in December 1979, and Milton Cato became the first Prime Minister. On 8 December 1979, the Government had to quell a brief uprising on Union Island, attributed to economic problems following the eruption of Soufriere in April. The eruption lasted for ten days, damaging agriculture and the new tourist industry, and caused widespread evacuation although there was no loss of life, and in 1980 Hurricane Allen struck the island, devastating the banana crop. The Prime Minister adopted a centralist line, critical of the revolution in Grenada and developments in Jamaica and Guyana, while seeking closer ties with Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago. In July 1984 the New Democratic Party won the general election, and leader Bequian James Fitz-Allen Mitchell immediately embarked on an ambitious programme to boost employment, reorganise agriculture and encourage tourism. This policy was largely successful and heralded a building boom on the island, although high unemployment continued to be a major problem. In May1989 James Mitchell was reelected to his second five-year term with his party winning all fifteen parliamentary seats. In July 1989 fire broke out in the police barracks in Kingstown, and quickly spread destroying a large part of the centre of town. The ensuing rebuilding programme was also geared at boosting tourism, and this increased to such an extent that in 1990, the number of cruise ships visiting the island had to be restricted to prevent overcrowding. In 1991 the banana industry, which accounted for almost half the country's export earnings, started a three-year replanting programme, although its future is uncertain largely because of political decisions being taken in Brussels and elsewhere, and outside its control. The Prime Minister was elected to his third term of office in 1994.

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