Caribbean History Forum

Take a look at these 10 basic facts, and find out how much you just don't know! Montserratian Ursula Petula Barzey does an outstanding job of explaining some of the things we ought to know about the Caribbean on her travel site, from the physical geography of the nations, outlined below, to pop

Centuries ago, Martinique was inhabited by indigenous Indians who called Martinique “the island of flowers”. Martinique was later discovered by Christopher Columbus on his fourth voyage in 1502. During the course of the 17th Century Martinique was colonized by the “Compagnie des Iles d’Amerique

Christopher Columbus landed on Guadeloupe on November 4, 1493. Though originally called Karukéra (Island of Beautiful Waters) by the Carib Indians, Columbus named the island after the famous sanctuary of Santa Maria de Guadalupe de Estremadura. Lacking gold and silver, the island was not of great

The first written records in the history of Dominica began in November 1493, when Christopher Columbus spotted the island. Prior to European contact, Dominica was inhabited by the Arawak. Dominica was a French colony from 1715 until the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, and then became a Briti

Although the British Virgin Islands have been inhabited since 1500 BC, their first officially documented residents were the Arawaks who came from South America around the year 100 BC. The Caribs displaced the Arawaks during the 15th century, not long before Christopher Columbus first spotted the

Aruba's first inhabitants were the Caquetio Indians from the Arawak tribe, who migrated there from Venezuela to escape attacks by the Caribs. Fragments of the earliest known Indian settlements date back to about 1000. Due to Aruba's mostly distant location from other Caribbean islands and strong c

Three years ago, Curian Campbell, asked the same question in Now Grenada. He was concerned about the disconnect between emerging generations of Caribbean young people, and their African History. He refers to Maya Angelou as having said: “For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a

• 1493. The Caribs and Arawaks inhabited the island when Christopher Columbus claimed it for Spain and named it Santa Maria de Montserrat. • 1632. The island fell under British control and the first colony was established by Irish Catholics forcibly moved there from St. Kitts. • 1660s. African

The history of islands of Grenada in the Caribbean, part of the Lesser Antilles group of islands, covers a period from the earliest human settlements though to the establishment of the contemporary nationstate of Grenada. First settled by indigenous peoples, by the time of European contact it was

Columbus left Spain in 1492 and, after first landing in the Bahamas, continued on to visit Cuba’s shores. There he found thick vegetation and peaceful Taino Indians, who had inhabited the island for at least 3,000 years. Within the next two decades, the Spanish Empire would wipe out most of the in

The earliest arrival of people in the islands now known as The Bahamas was in the first millennium AD. The first inhabitants of the islands were the Lucayans, an Arawakan-speaking Taino people, who arrived between about 500 and 800 AD from other islands of the Caribbean. Recorded history began on

Around 4000 years ago, Anguilla was a lush island covered in dense rain forest. It was discovered by Amerindian peoples who came by dugout canoes and rafts from South America's mainland. They called Anguilla "Malliouhana" which meant arrow-shape sea serpent and they developed villages, farms and

Netherlands Antilles, Dutch Nederlandse Antillen, Papiamentu Antianan Hulandes, group of five islands in the Caribbean Sea that formerly constituted an autonomous part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The group is composed of two widely separated subgroups approximately 500 miles (800 km) apart

In order to understand how Haiti became the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation, it is helpful to know a little about its troubled history of national debt, prejudicial trade policies by other countries and foreign intervention into its affairs. Occupying part of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola,

The Dominican Republic, a nation on the island of Hispaniola, is a part of the Greater Antilles island chain in the Caribbean Sea. The country, which ultimately claimed independence in July of 1924, occupies five-eighths of the aforementioned island, which it shares with the country of Haiti, ma

The Cayman Islands are unlikely to spring to mind when people think of British involvement in the Caribbean; Jamaica, Barbados and Bermuda are far more likely candidates. Yet this group of small islands, Cayman Brac, Little Cayman and Grand Cayman, have been a British territory since the middle

Barbados, island country in the southeastern Caribbean Sea, situated about 100 miles east of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Roughly triangular in shape, the island measures some 20 miles from northwest to southeast and about 15 miles from east to west at its widest point. The capital and larges

Antigua's history of habitation extends thousands of years, with the first settlements, dating from about 2400 B.C. with the Siboney (an Arawak word meaning "stone-people"), peripatetic Meso-Indians and followed by Arawaks (35-1100 A.D.) who were displaced by the Caribs, an aggressive people who vo