My islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis are two of the Caribbean's oldest colonised territories. Saint Kitts became the first British colony in the Caribbean in 1624 and then became the first French Caribbean colony in 1625, when the two nations decided to partition the island.
Battle of Saint Kitts, 1782, as described by an observer in a French engraving titled "Attaque de Brimstomhill".

Five thousand years prior to European arrival, I was settled by Native Americans. The latest arrivals, the Kalinago peoples, arrived approximately three centuries before the Europeans. The Kalinago allowed the Europeans to colonise Saint Kitts, while earlier attempts to settle other islands were met with immediate destruction of the colonies by the Indians. The Kalinago were eventually wiped out in the great Kalinago Genocide of 1626.

The island of Nevis was colonised in 1628 by British settlers from Saint Kitts. From there, Saint Kitts became the premier base for British and French expansion, as t