[6] With a population of 31,477 as of January 2021[4] on an area of 53.2 square kilometres (20.5 sq mi),[3] it encompasses the northern 60% of the divided island of Saint Martin, and some neighbouring islets, the largest of which is Île Tintamarre.

Despite seceding from Guadeloupe in 2007 and gaining more autonomy as an overseas collectivity of France, Saint Martin has remained an outermost region of the European Union and is part of the eurozone.

Due to confusion on early maps, the island accidentally got the name intended for Nevis by Christopher Columbus in honour of St Martin of Tours because he first sighted it on the saint's feast day on 11 November 1493.

Saint Martin was inhabited by Amerindian peoples for many centuries, with archaeological evidence pointing to a human presence on the island as early as 2000 BC.

[8] It is commonly believed that Christopher Columbus named the island in honor of Saint Martin of Tours when he encountered it on his second voyage of discovery.

However, he actually applied the name to the island now called Nevis when he anchored offshore on 11 November 1493, the feast day of Saint Martin.

[9][10] Nominally a Spanish territory, the island became the focus of the competing interest of the European powers, notably France and the United Provinces.

Tensions between the Netherlands and Spain were already high due to the ongoing Eighty Years' War, and in 1633 the Spanish captured St Martin and drove off the Dutch colonists.

[8] The French also began settling, and rather than fight for control of the entire island the two powers agreed to divide it in two with the Treaty of Concordia.

To work the new cotton, tobacco and sugar plantations the French and Dutch began importing large numbers of African slaves, who soon came to outnumber the Europeans.

[8] Tourism started expanding from the 1960s–70s onward, eventually becoming the dominant sector of Saint Martin's economy.

[6] In 2017, Saint Martin was again devastated by a hurricane, Irma, causing widespread destruction across the entire island.

[6] The Terres Basses region lying west of the capital Marigot, which contains the French half of the Simpson Bay Lagoon, is flatter.

Hurricane Irma hit Saint Martin on 6 September 2017; 95% of the structures on the French side were damaged or destroyed.

[16][17][18] On 11 September President Emmanuel Macron visited St Martin to view the damage and to assure residents of support for relief efforts.

[19] At that time, only tourists and visitors from France (mainlanders) had been evacuated from St. Martin, leading to complaints by black and mixed-race residents that whites were being given priority.

[22] Saint Martin was for many years a French commune, forming part of Guadeloupe, which is an overseas région and département of France.

In 2003 the population of the French part of the island voted in favour of secession from Guadeloupe in order to form a separate overseas collectivity (COM) of France.

The population decrease between 2017 and 2021 is largely due to the impact of Hurricane Irma which hit the island in early September 2017 and destroyed most of its infrastructure.