History · Saint Barthélemy

Saint Barthélemy: The Island Sweden Owned

A dry, sugar-poor speck in the northern Antilles — settled by Norman and Breton fishermen, given by France to Sweden for a warehouse in a French port, run as a free port for a century, sold back, and now a French tax-light playground for the very rich

By Worldlore Editorial · 19 September 2026

A 19th-century engraving of two lines of uniformed men drawn up in a street beside a shuttered two-storey building flying a flag, with townspeople watching from the roadside
An anonymous wood engraving of 1878 showing the ceremony at which Sweden handed Saint Barthélemy back to France, ending almost a century of Swedish rule. (Anonymous / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain)

The improbable colony

Saint Barthélemy — "St Barth" — is a small, hilly, arid island of about 25 square kilometres in the northern Lesser Antilles, with around 10,000 residents. It is a French overseas collectivity, but it carries the one genuinely unusual fact in its history: for 94 years it belonged to Sweden, the only Caribbean territory that kingdom ever held, acquired in a swap for trading rights in a French port. Too dry for the sugar plantations that made other islands rich, St Barth survived on smuggling, salt, fishing and, eventually, tourism.

A short history

  1. pre-1600s

    Carib island

    Seasonally used by Kalinago people; named by Columbus in 1493.

  2. 1648

    French settlement

    Colonists from Normandy and Brittany arrive from Saint Kitts.

  3. 1651–1784

    French rule

    A poor settler island; brief Knights of Malta ownership; buccaneer links.

  4. 1784

    Transfer to Sweden

    France cedes the island in exchange for warehouse rights in Gothenburg.

  5. 1785

    Gustavia and the free port

    Sweden declares a duty-free port; trade booms in wartime.

  6. 1878

    Sold back to France

    A referendum of residents approves; Sweden sells for 320,000 francs.

  7. 1946–2007

    Part of Guadeloupe

    Governed as a commune of the French department.

  8. 2003

    Referendum

    Islanders vote to separate from Guadeloupe.

  9. 2007

    Collectivity

    Saint Barthélemy becomes a self-governing French overseas collectivity.

A poor French island

Columbus sighted the island in 1493 and named it for his brother Bartolomeo; the Kalinago used it but did not settle permanently, as it has no rivers and little soil. French colonists came in 1648 from nearby Saint Kitts. The island changed hands and owners repeatedly in the 17th century — including a spell under the Knights of Malta — and gained a reputation as a haunt of buccaneers, who could sell their takings there without questions. Without the water for large-scale sugar, St Barth never developed a big plantation economy or the large enslaved population of its neighbours; its white settler population, many of Norman and Breton descent, farmed small plots and fished.

An early-19th-century painting of sailing ships in the harbour of Gustavia under the Swedish flag
Gustavia harbour under Swedish rule, early 19th century. As a neutral free port, it thrived while Britain and France fought, handling contraband and privateers' prizes. (Sjöhistoriska museet, Stockholm / Wikimedia Commons)

The Swedish century

In 1784 King Gustav III of Sweden, wanting a Caribbean foothold for trade, struck a deal with France: Sweden received Saint Barthélemy, and France received the right to a duty-free warehouse ("entrepôt") in the port of Gothenburg. Sweden renamed the main town Gustavia, laid it out on a grid, and in 1785 declared the whole harbour a free port. During the wars of the 1790s and 1800s, when the other Antilles were belligerent territory, neutral Gustavia boomed as a transshipment hub — its population briefly passed 5,000 — and Sweden's small colonial administration also ran a slave trade through it until abolishing slavery on the island in 1847. Once peace returned and steamships changed shipping patterns, the free port declined and the colony became a financial burden.

Back to France, and independence within it

Sweden decided to divest. After a local referendum in which residents voted overwhelmingly to rejoin France, the island was sold back in 1878 for 320,000 francs. France attached it administratively to Guadeloupe, and from 1946 it was a commune of the Guadeloupe department, sharing that island's institutions despite being 230 kilometres away and quite different in history and make-up. Post-war St Barth reinvented itself once more: from the 1950s and 1960s, helped by an American banking family's investment and its own duty-free status, it became an exclusive resort destination, drawing yachts, luxury villas and celebrities, with one of the highest costs of living in the Caribbean.

An empty white-sand beach backed by scrub and low hills at Anse de Grande Saline on Saint Barthélemy
Anse de Grande Saline, named for the salt pond behind it. From the 1950s, St Barth's beaches and duty-free status turned the once-poor island into one of the Caribbean's most exclusive resorts. (David Broad / Wikimedia Commons)

Saint Barthélemy now

Islanders increasingly wanted their own institutions and a status matching their tax-light, tourism-based economy. In a 2003 referendum they voted to separate from Guadeloupe, and in 2007 Saint Barthélemy became a French overseas collectivity with its own territorial council able to set local rules on tax, planning and immigration, while remaining French and, for now, part of the EU's outermost regions (it later shifted to "overseas country and territory" status). In September 2017 Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm, struck the island directly, causing extensive damage; reconstruction was rapid, funded by its wealthy property market.

What Saint Barthélemy carries

Saint Barthélemy's history is a series of workarounds for the fact that it could never grow sugar: it lived by smuggling and privateering, then as a Swedish free port, then as a duty-free luxury enclave. The Swedish century left the capital's name and street plan and little else; the enduring inheritance is the free-port instinct, which the 2007 self-government arrangement essentially formalised.

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