Founding of Saint Lucia

Saint Lucia became a self-governing state in association with the United Kingdom, responsible for its own internal affairs while Britain kept control of defence and foreign policy. This arrangement, shared with several other Caribbean islands, was a step towards full independence, which Saint Lucia gained in 1979 under John Compton. The island's colonial history was unusually turbulent: French and British forces fought over it for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it changed hands many times before Britain secured it in 1814. The population is descended mainly from enslaved Africans brought to work on sugar plantations, and the island has kept a French-based creole language alongside English. Saint Lucia is known for the twin volcanic peaks of the Pitons and for two Nobel laureates, the economist Arthur Lewis and the poet Derek Walcott.

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