Saint Kitts grew only sugar for 365 years, then shut the industry down
From 1640 until 2005, one crop ruled Saint Kitts. Farmers had abandoned tobacco because Virginia undercut them, and sugarcane took over, bringing enslaved Africans by the shipload and a railway built to haul the harvest. Then, facing huge losses and falling European prices, the government closed the whole industry in a single decision.
The island is small, about 29 kilometres long and 8 across, with a steep volcanic core too rugged to live on, so a ring road hugs the coast. Its highest point, Mount Liamuiga, is a dormant volcano whose last eruption came about 1,620 years ago; one side dome, Brimstone Hill, pushed limestone up from the seabed as it rose. In the last ice age, when seas were up to 91 metres lower, Saint Kitts, Nevis, Saba and Sint Eustatius formed one island.
Successive peoples arrived from both directions: archaic foragers from Florida, then Saladoid farmers from Venezuela's Orinoco around 100 BC, Arawakan-speaking Igneri around 800 AD, and the Kalinago around 1300, who called it Liamuiga, fertile island. The name Kitts comes from Kit, an old nickname for Christopher. The English founded their first Caribbean colony here in 1623 and the French followed in 1625; after killing the Kalinago they split the island, English in the middle and French at both ends, and the two powers traded it back and forth until 1783.
Slavery was abolished on 1 August 1834, but a four-year apprenticeship forced freed people to keep working the plantations. When they revolted, martial law was declared and British warships came from Antigua. The day is now Emancipation Day. Brimstone Hill Fortress, the largest fort ever built in the Eastern Caribbean, is a World Heritage Site.
Independence with Nevis came on 19 September 1983. The old sugar railway, built between 1912 and 1926, now carries tourists around the island in double-decker open-air coaches. In 2007 the islands became the smallest nation ever to host World Cup cricket matches, and a 1984 law lets foreigners gain citizenship by investing in approved property.
Source: Saint Kitts
