During his second voyage Columbus did the only Spanish favour to this dry and hilly island. He gave it the name of his brother Bartolomeo, in French Barthélémy, but it is popularly known as St Barts or St-Barth. Around 1685 a hundred or so peasants from western France took over St Barts, which until then everyone had ignored. By a century later their numbers had swollen to 600, who worked themselves into the ground to cultivate such a barren spot.

And despite the best efforts of the British who developed a sudden interest in the island’s strategic value, they clung on to what they had. Then in 1784 the ungrateful king Louis XVI ceded the island and its 600 inhabitants to Sweden in return for a vague right to have a French trading base in Gothenburg.

The result was that Caribbean trade could tranship through a port sheltered from the fighting elsewhere. But the wars ended and a century later the Swedish governor thought his small island with its 600 poor peasants scratching a living on its slopes was all too much.
So in 1877 France agreed to buy the place for 80,000 francs, thereby undoing Louis XVI’s mistake. Gustavia stayed a free port, however, and some of the St Barts, following the Swedish example, tried commercial ventures and even smuggling.
The result was a fine fleet of schooners and a good stock of seamen. Or at least that was the case until 1950 when a terrible hurricane destroyed a large number of the boats and, ten years later, another hurricane did for the rest. That was the end of St Barts’ fleet and the only riches left to exploit were its natural beauty.
With tourism up and running, land prices began climbing and happy landowners were rubbing their hands. The result of the economic development was that the population, only a few hundred souls sharing some 20 surnames in 1960, rapidly increased.
Even so, it remained largely white because immigrants were mainly from metropolitan France with a few from North America. That makes St Barts unique in the Antilles.