British Virgin Islands History

The Arawak tribe is believed to be among the first inhabitants of The Virgin Islands when they came from South America around 100 BC.  They remained until 1400 AD when the Carib tribe who already had settled elsewhere in the Caribbeans replaced them..

Christopher Columbus was the first European to sight the Virgin Islands in 1493 and named them Santa Ursula y las Once Mil Vírgenes (Saint Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins); hence The Virgins.  The Spanish Empire did not claim the islands until in the 1500s and never settled on them.  Later, the European colonists, English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Danish contested the region.  The Dutch first established a colony on Tortola around 1650, but the English expelled them two decades later and also took Anegada and Virgin Gorda.  Eventually, sugar planatations were established on the islands and African slaves were brought in to work the land.

The abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834 and growth of sugar beets in the US and Europe were among the reasons for the decline of the sugar cane industry on the Virgin Islands and elsewhere in the Caribbeans.  The economy suffered.