Dominica

The wettest, steepest and least developed of the islands, and the only one where an indigenous Caribbean people still holds territory. Dominica's mountains and rainforest made it genuinely hard to conquer, and the Kalinago used it as their last stronghold; Britain and France formally agreed in 1748 to leave it neutral and to them, an agreement neither kept. France settled it anyway, Britain took it in 1763, and the two fought over it until 1805. The terrain that frustrated planters also sheltered Maroon communities, whose war against the British in the first decade of the nineteenth century was among the most sustained in the Caribbean. Sugar never worked well here, so the island stayed poor, small-farmed and forested. The Kalinago Territory, some three thousand seven hundred acres on the east coast granted in 1903 and held communally, is the only remaining indigenous territory in the eastern Caribbean, and around three thousand Kalinago live there. Most Dominicans speak a French-based creole alongside English. Independence came on 3 November 1978, followed by two attempted coups and, in 1980, the election of Eugenia Charles, the Caribbean's first woman prime minister. Hurricanes David in 1979 and Maria in 2017 each destroyed a large part of the country. The island has no airport capable of taking large jets. Roseau is the capital. Boiling Lake is among the largest of its kind in the world. Morne Trois Pitons national park is a World Heritage site. The island markets itself as the Nature Isle and has committed to becoming climate-resilient after Maria.

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