Saint Kitts

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Saint Christopher

Country

Saint Kitts and Nevis

Archipelago

Leeward Islands

Region

Caribbean

Area

65 sq. mi.
168 km²

Coastline

- km

Highest elevation

Mt. Liamunga
3,796 ft.
1,156 m

Population

- Density

35,000 ppl.
-
538.5 ppl./sq.mi.
208.3 ppl./km²

Saint Kitts (also/previously known as Saint Christopher) is an island in the Caribbean.

St. Kitts, together with the island of Nevis, constitutes the nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. During the last Ice Age, the sea level was 200 feet (60 m) lower and St. Kitts and Nevis were one island with Saint Eustatius (also known as Statia) and Saba.

The island is situated at 17°15′N 62°40′W, about 1,300 miles (2,100 km) southeast of Miami, Florida, in the United States. It has a land area of about 65 sq. miles (168 km²), being 18 by 5 miles (29 by 8 km).

The island has a population of around 35,000, the majority of whom are of African descent. The main language is English (although there is a lingering French presence as well), and the literacy rate is approximately 98 per cent. Residents call themselves Kittitians (or Kittians).

St. Kitts is home to Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and also to the Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine and the Windsor University School of Medicine. [1]

1 Parishes
2 Geography
3 Economy
4 History
5 Gallery
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Parishes

Image:Saint Kitts-Nevis.geohive.gif

Image:StKitts Aerial.jpg

Main article: Parishes of Saint Kitts and Nevis

There are nine parishes on the island of St. Kitts:

[edit] Geography

The capital of the two-island nation, and also its largest port, is the city of Basseterre on Saint Kitts. There is a modern facility for handling large cruise ships here. There is a ring road which goes around the perimeter of the island; the interior of the island is too steep for inhabitation.

St. Kitts is six miles (10 km) away from Saint Eustatius to the north and two miles (3 km) from Nevis to the south. St. Kitts has three distinct groups of volcanic peaks: the North West or Mount Misery Range; the Middle or Verchilds Range and the South East or Olivees Range. The highest peak is Mount Liamuiga, formerly Mount Misery, a dormant volcano some 3,793 feet (1,156 m) high.

[edit] Economy

Kittitians use the Eastern Caribbean dollar which maintains a fixed exchange rate of 2.70-to-one with the United States dollar. The US dollar is just as widely accepted as the Eastern Caribbean dollar.

For hundreds of years, St. Kitts operated as a sugar monoculture; due to increasing unprofitability, the government shut the industry in 2005. Tourism is still a major source of income to the island, although the number and density of resorts is less than on other Caribbean islands.

[edit] History

Image:StKitts Brimstomhill.jpg Main article: History of Saint Kitts and Nevis

St. Kitts was originally settled by pre-agricultural, pre-ceramic "Archaic people", who migrated down the archipelago from Florida. In a few hundred years, the Archaic people disappeared, to be replaced by the ceramic-using and agriculturalist Saladoid people in around 100 B.C. The Saladoid people migrated to St. Kitts up the archipelago from the banks of the Orinoco River in Venezuela. These people were then replaced in 800 A.D. by the Igneri people, members of the Arawak tribe.

Around 1300 A.D., the Kalinago, or Carib people arrived on the islands. The war-like Kalinago people quickly dispersed the Igneri, and forced them northwards to the Greater Antilles. They named Saint Kitts Liamuiga meaning "fertile island", and would likely have expanded further north if not for the arrival of Eurpoeans.

Early European contact with St. Kitts included the Spanish under Christopher Columbus, and a French Jesuit settlement at Dieppe in 1538. The first permanent settlement was an English colony in 1623, followed by a French colony in 1625. The British and French breifly united to massacre the local Kalinago (preempting a Kalinago plan to massacre the Europeans), and then partitioned the island, with the English in the middle and the French on either end. The island originally produced tobacco, but switched to sugar cane in 1640 due to stiff competition from the colony of Virginia. The labour-intensive farming of sugar cane was the reason for the large-scale importation of African slaves.

The island alternated repeatedly between English and French control over the century, as one power would take the whole island, only to have it switch hands due to treaties or further military action. Parts of the island were heavily fortified, as exemplified by UNESCO World Heritage Site at Brimstone Hill and the now-crumbling Fort Charles. The island became British for the final time in 1783. In 1834 slavery was abolished in the British Empire, and in 1883 St. Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla were all linked under one presidency, located on St. Kitts, to the dismay of the Nevisians and Anguillans. Anguilla would eventually separate out of this arrangement in 1971, after an armed raid on St. Kitts.

Sugar production continued to dominate the local economy until 2005, when, after 365 years as a monoculture, the government closed the sugar industry. This was due to the industrys huge losses and well E.U. plans to cut sugar prices by large amounts in the near future.

Lord Hercules George Robert Robinson was governor of Saint Christopher from 1855 to 1859.
Robert Bradshaw was a major political figure in St. Kitts from 1932 to his death in 1978.

[edit] Gallery

The peninsula on the south-east tip of St. Kitts. The island on the left is Nevis.	Downtown Basseterre	Downtown Basseterre	Fishing boat, Basseterre harbor
Flamingo Tongue shell on a Sea Fan	Divers and anemone on the MV River Taw wreck	Juvenile French Angelfish near a sunken van	Diver and fish, MV River Taw wreck
Diver and sponges	Royal Gramma or Fairy Basslet