Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

The island where indigenous resistance lasted longest, and where its defeat created a people now living somewhere else. Saint Vincent's Kalinago population was joined from the seventeenth century by Africans who had escaped or been shipwrecked, and the two intermarried into a distinct community the British called the Black Caribs and who call themselves Garifuna. They held the island against European settlement far longer than anywhere else in the Lesser Antilles, forcing a treaty in 1773 and fighting the Second Carib War from 1795 under Joseph Chatoyer with French support. Defeat in 1797 was followed by deportation: some five thousand Garifuna were shipped to Roatan off Honduras, about half of them dying on the way, and their descendants now form Garifuna communities along the Central American coast from Belize to Nicaragua. Only after that removal did the island become a full sugar colony. Captain Bligh delivered breadfruit to the botanic garden at Kingstown in 1793, on the voyage after the mutiny, and the garden is the oldest in the western hemisphere. La Soufriere has erupted repeatedly, killing over a thousand people in 1902 and forcing mass evacuation in 2021. Independence came on 27 October 1979. The Grenadine islands to the south are a yachting destination. Chatoyer is the country's national hero. Kingstown is the capital. The country includes Bequia, Mustique, Canouan and Union Island. Arrowroot was once its main export. Garifuna communities in Central America still speak an Arawakan language carried from here. Their language, dance and music were recognised by Unesco in 2001, and Garifuna Settlement Day is a public holiday in Belize.

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