Saint Kitts and Nevis

The Kalinago inhabited the islands when Columbus sighted them in 1493. Saint Kitts became the first English colony in the Caribbean in 1623 and the first French one in 1625 — "the mother colony of the West Indies", the base from which both powers colonised other islands — and in 1626 English and French settlers massacred the indigenous population at Bloody Point. Brimstone Hill Fortress, built by the British with enslaved labour from the 1690s, changed hands with the French before the islands passed fully to Britain.

A sugar-plantation economy was worked by enslaved Africans until emancipation in 1834. Saint Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla were federated as a British associated state in 1967, but Anguilla rebelled and broke away. Saint Kitts and Nevis became independent in 1983 — the last British colony in the Caribbean to do so — with Nevis retaining its own assembly and a constitutional right to secede, which a 1998 referendum came close to exercising.

The state-owned sugar industry, the last in the Caribbean, closed in 2005. Since then the economy has run on tourism, offshore finance, and the citizenship-by- investment programme the country pioneered in 1984 — the world's oldest "passport for sale" scheme, and a major share of government revenue.

Culture is Afro-Caribbean, English-speaking, and church-going, with cricket a shared passion. The year's big celebrations are Sugar Mas, the Christmas-to-New- Year Carnival on Saint Kitts, and Nevis Culturama in the summer, both with string bands, calypso and soca, and masquerade troupes.

Life moves at a small-island pace, slower and quieter on Nevis, which is proud of its historic plantation great-house hotels and its links to Alexander Hamilton, born there, and Horatio Nelson, who married there. Family, community, and the church calendar shape the social round.

This is one of the smallest countries in the world, with most of the population on Saint Kitts around Basseterre and a quieter, more autonomous life on Nevis. The economy depends on tourism — cruise calls at Basseterre and stay-over resorts, with Nevis at the upmarket end — along with financial services and the sale of citizenship, which together give the federation a high income for the region.

Hurricane preparedness and longer-term climate concern are constant, and the government has pushed geothermal energy, for which Nevis has good potential, and a "sustainable island state" agenda.

The cooking is Caribbean. The national dish is stewed saltfish with spicy fried plantains, coconut dumplings, and seasoned breadfruit. Goat water, a spiced goat stew, pelau, conch, jerk, rice and peas, and johnnycakes are staples, along with abundant fresh fish and lobster.

Sugar-cane juice, mauby, and sorrel are the traditional drinks, alongside the local Carib and Stag beers and Cane Spirit Rothschild and rum.

Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, a World Heritage Site, is the headline sight, and the Saint Kitts Scenic Railway — the old narrow-gauge sugar train — loops much of the island past cane fields and villages. The dormant volcano Mount Liamuiga has a rainforest crater hike, and the beaches of the southeast peninsula, such as Cockleshell Bay with its view across to Nevis, are the best for swimming.

Basseterre has Independence Square and the Berkeley Memorial clock. On Nevis, the cloud-wreathed cone of Nevis Peak rises above a small capital, Charlestown, with the Hamilton and Nelson museums, a botanical garden, Pinney's Beach, and the hot springs and plantation inns that give the island its character.