History of Saint Lucia
[1] The more aggressive Caribs arrived around 800 AD, and seized control from the Arawaks by killing their men and assimilating the women into their own society.
[1][2]: 13–14 In the late 1550s the French pirate François le Clerc (known as Jambe de Bois, due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships.
[1][2]: 21 In 1605, an English vessel called the Oliphe Blossome was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia, after initially being welcomed by the Carib chief Anthonie.
[2]: 16–21 In 1626, the Compagnie de Saint-Christophe was chartered by Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIII of France to colonize the Lesser Antilles, between the eleventh and eighteenth parallels.
[3][4][5] The following year, a royal patent was issued to James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle by Charles I of England granting rights over the Caribbean islands situated between 10° and 20° north latitude, creating a competing claim.
Judlee with 300-400 Englishmen to establish a settlement at Praslin Bay but they were attacked over three weeks by Caribs, until the few remaining colonists fled on 12 October 1640.
[8] The following year, du Parquet, who had become Governor of Martinique, noted that the British had abandoned Saint Lucia and he began making plans for a settlement.
[9] As the Compagnie was facing bankruptcy, du Parquet sailed to France in September 1650 and purchased the sole proprietorship for Grenada, the Grenadines, Martinique and Sainte-Lucie for ₣41,500.
[12] The French drove off an attempted English invasion in 1659, but allowed the Dutch to build a redoubt near Vieux Fort Bay in 1654.
[2]: 31, 36 During the Seven Years' War Britain occupied Saint Lucia in 1762, but gave the island back at the Treaty of Paris on 10 February 1763.
By the time the island was restored to French rule in 1784, as a consequence of the Peace of Paris (1783), 300 plantations had been abandoned and some thousand maroons lived in the interior.
In Dec. 1792, Lt. Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse arrived with revolutionary pamphlets, and the poor whites and free people of color began to arm themselves as patriots.
The National Convention abolished enslavement on 4 Feb. 1794, but St. Lucia fell to a British invasion led by Vice Admiral John Jervis on 1 April 1794.
[2]: 60–65 A short time later, the British invaded in response to the concerns of the wealthy plantation owners, who wanted to keep sugar production going.
The Royalist planters fled with them, leaving the remaining Saint Lucians to enjoy “l’Année de la Liberté”, “a year of freedom from slavery…”.
General Moore was elevated to the position of Governor of Saint Lucia by Abercrombie and was left with 5,000 troops to complete the task of subduing the entire island.
A 1924 constitution gave the island its first form of representative government, with a minority of elected members in the previously all-nominated legislative council.
Ministerial government was introduced in 1956, and in 1958 St. Lucia joined the short-lived West Indies Federation, a semi-autonomous dependency of the United Kingdom.
After the second failure, the United Kingdom and the six windward and leeward islands—Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, Antigua, St. Kitts and Nevis and Anguilla, and St. Lucia—developed a novel form of cooperation called associated statehood.
