Liamuiga

Liamuiga, the Kalinago name for Saint Kitts, means fertile island. Its volcanic mountains rise above a coast of bays and cultivable land, with neighboring Nevis across a narrow channel. Indigenous people lived on the islands before English and French settlers arrived in the seventeenth century.

English colonists established a settlement on Saint Kitts in 1623, followed by the French in 1625. The newcomers divided the island between them and attacked its Kalinago inhabitants, killing many Indigenous people in a massacre remembered in the island’s colonial history. Tobacco cultivation gave way to sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans, tying the island to Atlantic commerce. Rivalry between England and France continued to shape Saint Kitts, while Nevis also developed as an English plantation colony.

The later city of Basseterre lies here.