Anguilla

The Arawak, who called the island Malliouhana, left petroglyphs in its caves. English settlers came from St Kitts in 1650, but Anguilla was too dry and flat for a plantation economy: people lived by smallholding, salt-raking, fishing, and boatbuilding, and by seasonal emigration to cut cane in the Dominican Republic, work the oil refineries of Aruba and Curaçao, and later to Britain and the United States.

Governed as part of a three-island colony with St Kitts and Nevis, Anguillians grew resentful of rule from Basseterre. In 1967 they expelled the St Kitts police and declared independence — from the federation, while wanting to remain British. The stand-off ended in 1969 with a near-comic British intervention by paratroopers and London police, and Anguilla was allowed to revert to direct British administration, formally becoming a separate territory in 1980.

Tourism from the 1980s was developed deliberately upmarket and low-key: no cruise ships of size, no casinos, no high-rise or all-inclusive resorts. Hurricane Irma caused severe damage in 2017. More recently the island's ".ai" internet domain, sought after by artificial-intelligence companies, has become a large source of government revenue alongside tourism and offshore finance.

Anguillian culture is English-speaking and Christian, descended from enslaved and free Africans and the island's smallholder and seafaring society. Boat racing — not cricket — is the national sport: hand-built wooden sloops with towering sails are raced on public holidays, and crews and home villages are followed with fierce loyalty, the season climaxing at the August festival.

String-band music, "jollification" work-parties, and the goat-stew tradition are part of island life, and Carnival at August Monday marks Emancipation. It is a quiet, conservative, tight-knit community of around 15,000, with a diaspora several times that size and strong ties back and forth.

About 15,000 people live on Anguilla, with the low-key settlement of The Valley as the capital. The economy is tourism — villas and boutique resorts — plus financial services, the domain-name windfall, and remittances; there is no income tax.

Nearly everything is imported, including much of the water, which is desalinated, and electricity is costly. Land is largely in local hands, daily life is car-dependent, and crime is low. The pace is deliberately slow, and much of the visitor economy is built around doing very little in comfortable surroundings.

Anguilla has a reputation as a Caribbean food destination out of proportion to its size. Spiny lobster (called crayfish here), conch — stewed, or in a thick "conch soup" — grilled and stewed fish, pigeon peas and rice, saltfish, johnnycakes, and goat stew are the local base, served both at simple beach shacks and at accomplished restaurants.

The barbecue shacks at Sandy Ground and Island Harbour, and roadside grills across the island, do ribs, chicken, and just-landed fish, often with a band and a rum punch. Local rum and a sunset at a Sandy Ground beach bar are close to a national institution.

The beaches are the point. Shoal Bay East, with its long sweep of powder sand and clear shallows, is the most famous; Rendezvous Bay, Meads Bay, Maundays Bay, and the tiny cliff-backed Little Bay (reached by rope or boat) are others. Offshore, day trips run to Sandy Island, Prickly Pear, and Scilly Cay for snorkelling, grilled lobster, and near-empty sand.

The reefs and a few deliberately sunk wrecks make for easy diving and snorkelling. On land, the Heritage Collection Museum tells the island's story, the Big Spring cave near Island Harbour holds Amerindian petroglyphs, and the salt pond at Sandy Ground recalls the old industry. The Dune Preserve, a driftwood beach bar built by the musician Bankie Banx, hosts the Moonsplash festival, and race day at Sandy Ground or Meads Bay is the best way to see the island at full tilt.