Saint Kitts and Nevis

The Kalinago inhabited the islands when Columbus sighted them in 1493. Saint Kitts became the first English colony in the Caribbean in 1623 and the first French one in 1625 — "the mother colony of the West Indies", the base from which both powers colonised other islands — and in 1626 English and French settlers massacred the indigenous population at Bloody Point. Brimstone Hill, fortified from 1690 and built up over the following century to British military designs by enslaved Africans, was considered impregnable by 1780 — "the Gibraltar of the Caribbean" — yet fell to a French siege in 1782 before the islands passed fully to Britain.

A sugar-plantation economy was worked by enslaved Africans; the slave trade ended in the British Empire in 1807 and slavery itself in 1834. Saint Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla, federated since 1882, became an associated state with full internal self-government in 1967, whereupon Anguilla broke away, returning to British rule and formally separating in 1980. Saint Kitts and Nevis became independent on 19 September 1983 — the most recent British territory in the Caribbean to do so — with Nevis retaining its own premier and assembly and a constitutional right to secede: a 1998 referendum returned 62 per cent for separation, short of the two-thirds needed.

The state-owned sugar industry, the last in the Caribbean, closed in 2005. Since then the economy has run on tourism, offshore finance, and the citizenship-by- investment programme the country began in 1984 — the oldest such scheme in the world.

Culture is Afro-Caribbean, English-speaking, and church-going, with cricket a shared passion. The year's big celebrations are Carnival on Saint Kitts, which runs from 18 December to 3 January, and Nevis Culturama in the summer, both with calypso, soca and steelpan music, and Carnival with its masquerade troupes.

Life moves at a small-island pace, slower and quieter on Nevis, which is proud of its historic plantation great-house hotels and its links to Alexander Hamilton, born there, and Horatio Nelson, who married Frances Nisbet at Montpelier Estate on the island in 1787. Family, community, and the church calendar shape the social round.

This is one of the smallest countries in the world, with most of the population on Saint Kitts around Basseterre and a quieter, more autonomous life on Nevis. The economy depends on tourism — cruise calls at Basseterre and stay-over resorts, with Nevis at the upmarket end — along with financial services and the sale of citizenship, which together give the federation a high income for the region.

Hurricane preparedness and longer-term climate concern are constant: Hurricane Georges did some USD 458 million of damage in 1998 and held back growth for years afterwards.

The cooking is Caribbean. Goat water, the best-known dish, stews goat with breadfruit, green pawpaw, and dumplings — "droppers" — in a tomato base. Cook-up or pelau, which puts chicken, pig tail, saltfish, and vegetables with rice and pigeon peas, is another favourite, and seafood is abundant.

Rum is as popular here as anywhere in the Caribbean, and Carib and Stag beers have been brewed on Saint Kitts since 1997. The national drink is Cane Spirits Rothschild, or CSR, distilled from fresh cane.

Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, a World Heritage Site, is the headline sight, and the Saint Kitts Scenic Railway — the narrow-gauge sugar line laid between 1912 and 1926, carrying tourists since 2003 — runs 18 miles along the coast past old cane land and villages. Mount Liamuiga, at 1,156 metres the highest point in the federation and quiet for some 1,800 years, has a rainforest hike to the rim of its summit crater, and the beaches of the flat southeast peninsula, looking across The Narrows to Nevis, are the best for swimming.

Basseterre has Independence Square and, at the Circus, the Berkeley Memorial fountain and clock of 1883. On Nevis, the cloud-wreathed cone of Nevis Peak — 985 metres, long dormant — rises above a small capital, Charlestown, home to the Hamilton and Nelson museums; around the island are a botanical garden, the three miles of Pinney's Beach, and the volcanic hot springs and plantation inns that give the island its character.