St Vincent was a densely populated island, especially after it became a refuge for Caribs fleeing European control of other islands. Their numbers, combined with their ferocity, helped to repulse all European attempts to establish a foothold on the island. While all Europeans were resisted, the most virulent hatred was saved for the British who were presumptuous enough to grant the rights to St Vincent lands to their subjects. In the end, it was Britain's rival, France, who was allowed to form the first settlement in the early eighteenth century. By this time, the Grenadines (called Los Pajaros, or The Birds, by early Spanish sailors) had all been colonized and converted into plantation economies worked by slaves, while the native populations was eliminated, removed or marginalized.

In 1675, some years before the French settlement was established, a Dutch slave ship sank in the channel between Bequia and St Vincent. The crew and a large number of slaves perished, but many slaves managed to swim ashore and were accepted by the Caribs, forming one large community. However, within a couple generations, division emerged and the Caribs divided along racial lines: the Black Caribs , descendants of the slave-ship survivors, and Yellow Caribs , who were of strictly native heritage. European influence increased and plantations flourished, and in 1783 Britain was granted sole control of St Vincent as part of the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended the American Revolutionary War.

In 1795 French radical Victor Hugues instigated a revolt that resulted in the Yellow Caribs, led by Chief Duvallier, and the Black Caribs, led by Chatoyer, sweeping across the island, burning plantations and killing settlers in their wake. Chatoyer, convinced he could not be killed by another mortal, challenged the British commander, Alexander Leith, to a duel and was killed (though under mysterious circumstances).

A year later, Carib resistance was crushed. Most of the surviving Caribs, some 5000, were shipped to the island of Roaton, off the coast of Honduras, and the few that were allowed to remain were settled in the northeast tip of the island at Sandy Bay. The British soon set up a plantation economy and imported 18,000 African slaves to support it. When slavery was abolished in 1834, the freed slaves turned to small-plot farming, and European immigrant labour was brought in to replace them on the plantations.

However, this more expensive workforce, combined with the fact that cane was being replaced by beet as a main source of the raw materials for sugar, led to the decline of the plantation system throughout the region. What economy and politics had started, nature finished. In 1812, La SoufriA?re, a volcano in the north of St Vincent, erupted and destroyed coffee and cotton crops, and again in 1902, the final death knell of the island's plantation economy. Nature has played its part ever since. An eruption in 1979 (the year St Vincent and the Grenadines gained independence) led to the evacuation of 20,000 people and destroyed crops and land, and hurricanes in 1980 and 1986 damaged the agricultural industry even further.

St Vincent and the Grenadines, one of the poorest nations in the region, is still recovering. Perhaps surprisingly, given its strife and the political turmoil of its neighbours, the country has had a stable democracy since independence, and a government under James Mitchell's New Democratic Party since 1984