Saint Lucia

The island that changed hands more often than any other in the Caribbean - fourteen times between Britain and France, which is why it is called the Helen of the West Indies. The Kalinago resisted settlement successfully for over a century, destroying early English attempts in 1605 and 1638, and the French established the first lasting colony only in the 1650s. The island's value was strategic rather than agricultural: the deep sheltered anchorage at Marigot Bay and the harbour at Castries mattered to fleets operating in the eastern Caribbean, and possession followed the outcome of each European war. Britain took final control in 1814. The consequence of the alternation is a country that is officially English-speaking, predominantly Catholic, governed under a legal system with French roots, and whose population mostly speaks a French-based creole at home. Enslaved people who fled to the interior fought a guerrilla campaign as the Brigands during the revolutionary wars, and the French republic's abolition of 1794 was reversed when Britain returned. Bananas replaced sugar in the twentieth century and then collapsed when European trade preferences ended. Independence came on 22 February 1979. The island has produced two Nobel laureates, Arthur Lewis in economics and Derek Walcott in literature, the highest number per head of any country. The Pitons dominate its southwest coast. Castries is the capital. The Pitons are a World Heritage site and appear on the flag's imagery. The island has a drive-in volcanic crater at Soufriere. Its Jounen Kweyol festival each October celebrates the creole language.

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