History
Unlike most other Caribbean islands, the European " discovery " of St Lucia is an ambiguous matter, though it's most likely that the first European to sight the island was a Spaniard . Juan de la Cosa had sailed with Christopher Columbus on his first two voyages, and during an independent expedition of 1504, he sighted St Lucia and named it El Falcon on the maps he prepared. In 1511, the island appeared on a Spanish Royal Cedula of Population as St Lucia, and was included on a Vatican map of 1520. As they did with many other islands in the region, the Spanish claimed St Lucia in absentia soon after de la Cosa's visit, but their attempts to establish settlements were swiftly repelled by the native Caribs, and they made no great effort to colonize the island. In 1600, the Dutch made an abortive attempt to develop St Lucia, and the next Europeans to arrive did so by accident. In 1605, a British ship called the Olive Branch was blown off course on its way to Guyana, and its 67 settlers were forced to land on the island's south coast. Soon after negotiating with the Caribs for shelter, the settlers were attacked. A prolonged battle followed, and five weeks later the nineteen surviving settlers escaped in Carib canoes. Similar clashes between Caribs and small bands of settlers continued for another dozen years, during which time the French were busy building up their Caribbean presence, and were able to claim St Lucia alongside several neighbouring islands with little opposition. In 1651, St Lucia was sold to Governor du Parquet of neighbouring Martinique, who built a bastion on the peninsula to the north of Castries now called Vigie. The French continued to battle with the Caribs until a peace agreement was signed in 1660. Over the next 150 years, prolonged and bloody Anglo-French hostilities saw the "Helen of the West Indies" change hands fourteen times. In spite of the fighting, the French made the first concerted efforts to turn St Lucia into a money-making colony, settling along the fertile southeast coast and establishing a town that they called Soufriere in 1743, and officially designating it the capital in 1746. By 1765, they had introduced sugarcane , setting up vast plantations and bringing in slaves from West Africa to tend the crops that they hoped would earn them huge profits. In retaliation for French support of the fledgling colonies in America's war of independence, the British initiated a prolonged attack against the French in 1778. After four years of fighting, Britain's Admiral George Rodney had established a bastion and a regional base for British ships at Pigeon Island, and from here he launched an attack on French naval forces stationed at the nearby Les Saintes archipelago off the coast of Guadeloupe. The French navy was decimated, and British victory in what became known as the Battle of the Saints signified that French domination of the Caribbean was soon to end. However, French control of St Lucia was not immediately relinquished. The 1783 Treaty of Paris put St Lucia into French hands once again, and during the 1789-99 French Revolution all the towns were renamed, French nobles were executed by guillotine, and, in a radical move of solidarity, the Republicans freed the slaves . Sensing that the British would soon regain power, the Africans justly feared for their new-found freedom. While many stayed on the plantations, others formed a loosely knit freedom-fighting group known as the Brigands , who proceeded to launch attacks against the British, levelling plantations and terrorizing the island. In 1814, the Treaty of Paris brought Anglo-French conflicts in the Caribbean to a long-overdue conclusion, with France ceding St Lucia to the British. Once the island was firmly established as a crown colony , St Lucian economics mirrored the pattern of slave-holding islands throughout the Caribbean. A brief period of prosperity followed the cessation of war, but this lasted only until the abolition of slavery in 1834. Though freed Africans were contracted to the plantations as indentured workers for a further four years, St Lucia's estates soon ceased to be profitable, and the economy crumbled. Over the next several decades, the question of independence from Britain grew, and in 1958 St Lucia joined other British colonies in the West Indies Federation , a political grouping formed with the aim of winning self-rule. By the time St Lucia was granted full self-government in 1967, a two-party system had developed, with the conservative, business-friendly United Workers Party (UWP) consolidating support and vying for power with the more liberal St Lucia Labour Party (SLP). After years of lobbying, Britain finally acceded to the successive autonomy movements throughout the Caribbean and granted the new state of St Lucia independence on February 22, 1979. However, the island remains a Commonwealth country and a constitutional monarchy, with the British sovereign as the titular head of state, represented on the island by a governor general.
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