History
Europeans first landed on the island in either 1492 or 1502 during Spain's early exploration of the Caribbean. In 1643 a French expedition under the direction of Jacques du Parquet, the Governor of Martinique, established the first permanent European settlement on the island. The Governor De Rousselan signed a treaty with the local Carib people in 1660. Like the English and Dutch on other islands, the French began to develop the land for the cultivation of sugar cane as a commodity crop on large plantations. After the Seven Years' War between Great Britain and the France-Spanish coalition ended in French defeat, the Treaty of Paris on 10 February 1763 confirmed an exchange of colonial territories by the signatories.
When the British acquired the island, planters were trying to use the Carib as labourers. The British imported enslaved Africans as workers. Many Carib died because of lack of immunity to Eurasian diseases, such as smallpox and measles. Others died from overwork and maltreatment by the Europeans.
Caribbean conditions were harsh, and many African slaves died as well, requiring continued importation of new captives. The British continued to import slaves until they abolished the trade in 1808. By that time, people of ethnic African and less so Carib descent greatly outnumbered those of ethnic European background.
Saint Lucia continued to be contested by France and Great Britain until the British secured it in 1814, following its war with the United States. Saint Lucia was considered part of the British Windward Islands colony.
In the mid-twentieth century, it joined the West Indies Federation (1958–1962) when the colony was dissolved. In 1967, Saint Lucia became one of the six members of the West Indies Associated States, with internal self-government. In 1979 it gained full independence under Sir John Compton. Compton, of the conservative United Workers party (UWP), served as prime minister from 1982 to 1996, after which he was succeeded by Vaughn Lewis.
Kenny Anthony of the Labour Party was prime minister from 1997 to 2006. In 2006, the UWP, again led by Compton, won control of parliament. In May 2007, after Compton suffered a series of ministrokes, Finance and External Affairs Minister Stephenson King became acting prime minister. He succeeded as prime minister after Compton died in September 2007. In November 2011, the honorable Kenny Anthony was re-elected as prime minister.
Read more about this topic: Saint Lucia
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of the martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when the time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)