Caribbean · LCA
Saint Lucia
The story · 8 chapters
How it was drawn
A Kalinago island that France and Britain fought over so often it changed hands many times, British from 1814 and independent since 1979.
Play the story Take the first lessonThrough the ages
Rivals in history
The kingdoms, empires and states Saint Lucia fought or stood against, from the first to today.
- Kingdom of England1605 to 1640
The Kalinago fought off the first English colonists, who landed from the Olive Branch in 1605, and destroyed a second English settlement in 1640.
- Kingdom of Great Britain1762 to 1783
Britain captured French Saint Lucia in 1762 and again in 1778, and used its bays as a naval base to watch the French fleet at Martinique, notably before the Battle of the Saintes in 1782. Each time the peace returned it to France.
- Kingdom of France1778 to 1783
In December 1778 a French fleet under the Comte d'Estaing landed troops to retake the island from the British, but the assault on the British lines failed. France recovered Saint Lucia only through the peace treaty of 1783.
- Kingdom of Great Britain1794 to 1797
In the Brigands' War, freed slaves and French republicans fought British occupation. They drove the British out in 1795, but a large British army retook the island in 1796 and crushed the resistance by 1797.
- Napoleonic France1802 to 1814
France regained Saint Lucia at the Peace of Amiens in 1802 and restored slavery. Britain stormed Morne Fortune and took the island in 1803, and France gave it up for good in the Treaty of Paris of 1814.
Today
Saint Lucia now
England and France contested Saint Lucia -- with its fine natural harbor at Castries and burgeoning sugar industry -- throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries, with possession changing 14 times; it was finally ceded to the UK in 1814 and became part of the British Windward Islands colony. Even after the abolition of slavery on its plantations in 1834, Saint Lucia remained an agricultural island, dedicated to producing tropical commodity crops.
- Capital
- Castries
- Government
- parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy; a Commonwealth realm
- Head of government
- Philip J. Pierre
- Head of state
- Charles III
- Languages
- English
- Area
- 616 km²
Through time
Then and now
- Population179,3002023 · 93,000 in 1950
- Life expectancy72.7 years2023 · 48.3 years in 1950
- GDP per person$10,4522022 · $1,231 in 1950
- Living in cities29%2025 · 19% in 1950
- Military alliancesNone of these2024 · None of these in 1950
- War deathsNone2025
Population: HYDE 3.3, Gapminder and UN WPP. GDP per capita: Maddison Project Database 2023. Urban share: UN WPP. Life expectancy: Riley, HMD, UN WPP. Literacy: OWID historical estimates, World Bank, UNESCO. Military spending: SIPRI. War deaths: UCDP. Political regime: V-Dem, Regimes of the World. All via Our World in Data (CC BY 4.0). Alliances and organization memberships: compiled by Atlas. Satellites in orbit: CelesTrak SATCAT. Modern borders, backcast.
Relations
Close partners and tensions
Close partners
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Canada
Summarised from World Bank and Wikipedia data, updated 23 October 2026.