History of Montserrat
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Montserrat was populated by Arawak and Carib people when it was claimed by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage for Spain in 1493, naming the island Santa María de Montserrate, after the Blessed Virgin of the Monastery of Montserrat, which is located on the Mountain of Montserrat, in Catalonia, Spain. Despite claiming the island, the Spanish did not colonise it and English and French interest grew.
Charles I granted a patent to allow colonisation in 1625. The first European colony was established in 1631 when Irish Catholics were forcibly moved (or fled) to there and Antigua to prevent them from siding against English Protestants on St Kitts.
The import of slaves, common to most Caribbean islands, mainly coming from West Africa, followed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and an economy based on sugar, rum, arrowroot and Sea Island cotton was established.
After Oliver Cromwell's defeat of the Irish during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, (notably at the siege of Drogheda in 1649) Irish political prisoners were transferred to Montserrat. A new fort at Kinsale was built.
In 1655 Cromwell himself was entertained on Montserrat. Montserrat was hit by hurricanes in 1657 and 1658.
In 1782, during the American Revolutionary War, Montserrat was briefly captured by France. It was returned to the United Kingdom under the Treaty of Paris which ended that conflict.
A failed slave uprising on 17 March 1798 (and the island's large Irish Catholic population) led to Montserrat later becoming one of only four places in the world that celebrates St Patrick's Day as a public or bank holiday (the others being the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador). Slavery was finally abolished in Montserrat in 1834, presumably as a result of the general emancipation of slaves within the British Empire in that same year.
Falling sugar prices during the nineteenth century had an adverse effect on the island's economy and in 1869 the philanthropist Joseph Sturge of Birmingham formed the Montserrat Company to buy sugar estates that were no longer economically viable. The company planted limes starting production of the island's famous lime juice, set up a school, and sold parcels of land to the inhabitants of the island, with the result that much of Montserrat came to be owned by smallholders.[1]
From 1871 to 1958 Montserrat was administered as part of the Federal Colony of the Leeward Islands, becoming a province of the short-lived West Indies Federation from 1958 to 1962, when it reverted to a colony of the United Kingdom.
In September 1989, Hurricane Hugo struck Montserrat with full force, damaging over 90 percent of the structures on the island. AIR Studios closed, and the tourist trade upon which the island depended was nearly wiped out. Within a few years, however, the island had recovered considerably — only to be struck again by disaster.
The Soufrière Hills volcano erupted starting on July 18, 1995 making most of the island uninhabitable and displacing ⅔ of its population. The UK Government sent HM Ships Liverpool and Newcastle to help evacuate the island.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Commonwealth Secretariat website: Montserrat. Retrieved 30 January 2007.
[edit] External links
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