🇦🇮 Anguilla

The earliest Native American artefacts found on Anguilla date to around 1300 BC, evidence of settlement by peoples who migrated from South America. This marks the beginning of continuous human presence on the island.

Remains of settlements on Anguilla date from AD 600, and the petroglyph ledges at Big Spring and Fountain Cavern were carved between AD 600 and 1200. More than 100 petroglyphs at Big Spring attest to an organised pre-Columbian ritual culture.

Some sources hold that Columbus sighted the island in 1493, while others credit the French Huguenot René Goulaine de Laudonnière in 1564. The precise moment of first European contact remains uncertain.

The Company established a fort on the island in 1631 but withdrew in 1633 after the Spanish destroyed it. The episode marks the first documented European attempt at fortified occupation.

Traditional accounts date the first English settlement to 1650, with colonists arriving from Saint Kitts. They planted tobacco and, to a lesser extent, cotton, founding the plantation economy and the island's enduring British connection.

French forces temporarily took the island in 1666 but relinquished it the following year under the Treaty of Breda. Major John Scott, visiting in September 1667, described leaving the island in good condition, and noted 200 or 300 refugees arriving in July 1668.

Archival evidence indicates at least 100 enslaved people on Anguilla by 1683, drawn from Central as well as West Africa, with a regional slave depot on Nevis serving the Leeward Islands from 1672. Enslaved labour worked sugar plantations that displaced tobacco as the main crop, and their descendants came greatly to outnumber the white settlers.

French forces attacked in 1688, 1745 and 1796, causing much destruction but never capturing the island. Anguilla's continuous defence secured its retention within the British sphere.

Having administered the island directly since settlement, Britain in the early 19th century joined Anguilla, against the wishes of its inhabitants, to a single dependency with Saint Kitts and Nevis, an arrangement islanders resisted for over a century.

The slave trade was terminated across the British Empire in 1807 and slavery outlawed completely in 1834. Many Anguillan planters subsequently sold up or left, transforming the island's social and economic structure.

From as early as 1813 Christian ministers formally ministered to the enslaved and promoted literacy among converts. The Wesleyan (Methodist) Missionary Society of England built churches and schools from 1817, laying the foundation of education and the island's Anglican and Methodist religious character.

Having previously administered Anguilla through Antigua, Britain transferred oversight to nearby Saint Kitts in 1825. This began the constitutional subordination that Anguillans would resent and eventually overturn.

The 1882 federation bound Anguilla to St Kitts and Nevis despite the opposition of many Anguillans. The arrangement became the central grievance of Anguillan politics for nearly a century.

Economic stagnation, severe droughts in the 1890s and the Great Depression of the 1930s drove many Anguillans to seek prospects abroad. Sustained emigration shaped the territory's small population and remittance-dependent economy.

Universal adult suffrage was introduced in 1952, broadening political participation on the island. It laid the electoral basis for the later movement to separate from Saint Kitts.

Anguilla formed part of the short-lived West Indies Federation between 1958 and 1962. Its collapse returned the island to association with St Kitts and Nevis.

In 1967 the three-island associated state received full internal self-government. Many Anguillans rejected the arrangement and resented St Kitts' dominance within it.

In 2024 the Heritage Collection Museum handed its artefacts to the Anguilla National Museum. The consolidation centralised custody of the island's historical record.

Registrations of .ai domain names doubled in 2022 and Bloomberg reported Anguilla was expected to earn as much as $30 million in registration fees for 2023. By 2024 the government reported EC$105.5 million (US$39m), about a quarter of total revenue, and expected a further 25% rise.

In December 2021 American Eagle, on behalf of American Airlines, began nonstop Embraer 175 jet flights from Miami to Anguilla. The airport, renamed Clayton J. Lloyd International in 2010, can handle narrow-body jets and is seeking further carriers.

From 2020 the Royal Navy has often stationed a River-class offshore patrol vessel long-term in the Caribbean for patrol and sovereignty protection. In October 2023 the destroyer HMS Dauntless, temporarily replacing HMS Medway, visited Anguilla to help local authorities prepare for the hurricane season peak.

Irma, the most powerful hurricane to hit Anguilla, caused around $320 million in material damage in September 2017 and the economy's biggest setback. Infrastructure was repaired over 2018/19 and recovery began in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic reversed gains in 2020/21.

Anguilla hosted the World Travel Awards in December 2014, giving its tourism industry a major promotional boost. The event reinforced the island's positioning as a high-end Caribbean destination.

Faced with a mounting deficit after the 2008 global crisis, the government imposed a 3% levy in April 2011. It was Anguilla's first form of income tax, marking a departure from its tax-free status.

A branch of the Saint James School of Medicine was established on the island in 2011. It added tertiary education capacity and an offshore education revenue stream.

In 2006 and 2007 Chinese, Indian and Mexican labourers arrived to build major tourist developments, as the local population could not meet demand. By the 2001 census 28% of residents were already non-Anguillan.

Hurricane Luis caused significant damage in September 1995 and set back the economy, especially tourism, in late 1995. Hurricane Lenny brought severe flooding of 5 to 20 feet in 1999, with further economic setback in 2000.

The Trust was created in 1989 and opened its current office in 1991, charged with preserving Anguilla's natural and cultural heritage. It became the principal institution for heritage conservation on the island.

The territory's constitution took effect on 1 April 1982 and was amended in 1990. It remains the framework for Anguilla's internal government as a British overseas territory.

In 1980 Anguilla was permitted to separate formally from Saint Kitts and Nevis, the separation achieved in 1971 being recognised by its establishment as a distinct British Crown colony or dependency, today an overseas territory of the United Kingdom. Political stability followed, with considerable growth in tourism and offshore finance.

In July 1971 the United Kingdom Parliament passed the Anguilla Act 1971, formalising British administration of the island in statute and giving legal form to the outcome of the 1969 intervention; two years after the revolt against rule from Saint Kitts, Britain thereby finally permitted Anguilla to separate, following several earlier failed attempts.

In March 1969 Britain landed 300 troops, restoring British authority over the island without significant bloodshed. The intervention ended the republican episode and set the course for a negotiated settlement.

With negotiations deadlocked, a second referendum confirmed the wish to separate from St Kitts and the Republic of Anguilla was unilaterally proclaimed with Webster as president. The mission of British envoy William Whitlock failed to break the impasse.

On 30 May 1967 Anguillans forcibly expelled the St Kitts police force and, after a referendum, declared independence from St Kitts. Led by Atlin Harrigan and Ronald Webster, the aim was not sovereignty but separation from Saint Kitts and Nevis and a return to British colonial status.