British Virgin Islands

Amerindian peoples — Arawak, then Kalinago — lived here before Columbus passed in 1493 and named the islands for Saint Ursula and her legendary 11,000 virgins. Dutch and then English planters settled from the seventeenth century, growing sugar and cotton with enslaved African labour. After emancipation in 1834 the plantations failed and most planters left, and the freed population settled on smallholdings as a land-owning peasantry of farmers and fishermen — a pattern that still shapes the BVI.

Governed as part of the Leeward Islands and then as a separate colony from 1960, the territory turned to new industries from the 1960s: upmarket tourism, led by Laurance Rockefeller's Little Dix Bay, and yacht chartering out of Tortola. From the 1980s the BVI became one of the world's largest offshore incorporation centres, and hundreds of thousands of "BVI companies" now generate the bulk of government revenue.

Hurricane Irma devastated the islands in September 2017. In 2022, after the elected premier was arrested in the United States on drug-trafficking charges, a UK-appointed commission of inquiry recommended direct rule; London held off pending governance reforms, and elected government has continued.

BVI "Belonger" identity is English-speaking, Christian — Methodism runs deep — and descended from enslaved Africans and the post-emancipation smallholders. Fungi (or "scratch") bands, using a gourd "squash", ukulele, and washboard, provide the traditional music, and the August Emancipation Festival is the territory's carnival, marking the end of slavery on 1 August 1834.

Boat-building and sloop racing are part of the heritage, and islanders are keen to distinguish themselves from the more Americanised US Virgin Islands to the west. It is a small, conservative resident community living alongside a large transient world of yacht crews, charter guests, and finance professionals.

About 32,000 people live in the BVI, most on Tortola, where Road Town is the capital; Virgin Gorda, Anegada, and Jost Van Dyke are the other inhabited islands. The economy rests on financial services and on tourism — yacht charter, villas, and day trips — with no income tax and a high cost of living.

A large share of the workforce holds permits and comes from across the eastern Caribbean. Daily life is car-dependent, tied to the ferry timetable, and, since 2017, still shaped by the long recovery from Irma, which flattened much of the building stock and infrastructure.

The food is Caribbean and sea-focused: conch (as fritters or "in butter sauce"), fresh fish, whelks, "fish and fungi" (with a cornmeal-and-okra polenta), roti, salt-fish pates, callaloo, and johnnycake. Anegada is renowned for its spiny lobster, grilled on the beach at the island's lobster restaurants.

The rum tradition is strong — the Callwood distillery on Tortola still works cane in a copper pot — and the Painkiller cocktail was created at the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke, so named because swimmers arrive with wet, "soggy" dollars from wading ashore.

The Baths on Virgin Gorda are the signature sight: a shoreline maze of house-sized granite boulders forming caves, tunnels, and pools that you scramble and wade through to reach a hidden beach. But the main attraction is the sailing — the sheltered Sir Francis Drake Channel, dotted with easy anchorages, is why the BVI became a chartering centre.

Jost Van Dyke is famous for its beach bars — White Bay, the Soggy Dollar, and Foxy's — and the tidal Bubbly Pool. Anegada, the only flat coral island, sits inside a large reef with flamingos, rock iguanas, huge empty beaches, and the lobster. The wreck of the RMS Rhone, sunk in an 1867 hurricane off Salt Island, is one of the Caribbean's premier dive sites.

Virgin Gorda also offers Gorda Peak and the yachting hub of the North Sound, and Tortola has Cane Garden Bay, the rainforest of Sage Mountain, and Road Town's small museum and botanic garden. Norman Island, said to be an inspiration for Treasure Island, has caves to snorkel and a floating bar.