St Kitts and Nevis - History

The islands were originally settled from South America, and had Amerindian populations at the time of the first European landings. St Christopher (St Kitts) was sighted by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1493. It was colonised by the English under Sir Thomas Warner in 1623 and during the following centuries sugar was grown on plantations worked by enslaved Africans. Already in 1624, however, another part of the island was colonised by the French (who also used slaves on their estates) and the two powers fought over the island during the 17th and 18th century until St Kitts was ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Versailles (1783). Nevis was settled by the English in 1628. It, too, was subject to attack, from the French and Spanish, in the 17th and 18th centuries, with less damage, however, to its economy. From 1816 the islands were administered, along with Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands, as a single colony and from 1871 as part of the Leeward Islands Federation.

The two islands, together with Anguilla, assumed the status of association with the UK in 1967, a situation which the Anguillans rejected from the outset, with rebellion beginning in 1967. In 1971, the UK and the other islands agreed that Anguilla would formally separate and remain a UK dependency when the country achieved its independence.

The country, as the Federation of St Christopher and Nevis, had internal self-government from 1976, and achieved independence on 19 September 1983, choosing to remain a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state.

The St Kitts–Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP) held power from 1967 until defeat in 1980 by a coalition of the People’s Action Movement (PAM) and Nevis Reformation Party (NRP), which brought PAM’s Dr Kennedy Alphonse Simmonds to the leadership as Prime Minister. Simmonds was re-elected in 1984, 1989 and 1993.