The first Europeans to establish a permanent base here were the British , who arrived in 1650 and began growing tobacco and cotton, and raising livestock with a small number of imported slaves. Short on rainfall, and without the size or the quality of soil to enable its plantations to compete with nearby islands, Anguilla never really flourished. Those who could afford to leave made off for more prosperous islands.

For centuries the islanders who remained managed on little more than subsistence farming and fishing . Furthermore, they developed a reputation for boat building and seamanship, running boats that exported salt and fish and carried local men off for seasonal work in the sugar fields of Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic) and the oil refineries of Aruba and CuraA§ao.

After World War II, with its major Caribbean colonies pressing for independence, Britain showed little interest in continuing to maintain Anguilla. For convenience, it was decided in the 1960s that the island should be administered alongside nearby St Kitts and Nevis , and a union of the islands was put in place. Anguillans, who regarded the politicians on St Kitts as arrogant and bullying, were outraged and demonstrated against the union. They declared independence, sending home the policemen installed by St Kitts and calling in a Harvard law professor to draft a national constitution.

Showing a wholly disproportionate reaction, British troops decided to invade and crush "The Rebellion" . In March 1969 a crack battalion of over three hundred stormed ashore, only to be met by local citizens waving flags and demanding to be put back directly under British rule. Not a shot was fired, and the event was dubbed Britain's Bay of Piglets.

Shame-faced, Britain resumed direct responsibility for Anguilla, which it has maintained to this day, with the island run by an elected government but the British-appointed Governor in charge of matters of defence and foreign policy. Tourism took off in the 1980s, when day-trippers from nearby St Martin/St Maarten began to arrive in droves. Today the industry drives the local economy, leaving fewer and fewer of its nearly 10,000 inhabitants dependent on the trade in lobster and fish that sustained previous generations.