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Carib Indians, native to St. Barts for hundreds
of years, called St. Barts Ouanaloa, but Christopher
Columbus had other ideas upon arriving here in 1493.
He tagged the small island St. Bartholomé
after his brother of the same name. The Spanish
by passed St. Barts as they moved on to explore
other areas of the Caribbean, but it wasn't long
before St. Barts attracted the French, who were
lured by St. Barts' convenient location along the
West Indian Trade Route. Bitter disputes with the
native population that remained on St. Barts finally
dissipated in the late 17th century when a small,
but prosperous, colony was established.
Settlers took advantage
of St. Barts' protected harbor for nearly one
hundred years, but eventually sought to pursue
other interests, trading St. Barts to Sweden in
1784. Under the orders of King Gustav III, who
deemed the hub of St. Barts to be its capital
and named it after himself, the infrastructure
on St. Barts grew exponentially. Gustavia became
a thriving shipping and trading port. Only a series
of natural disasters in the 19th century thwarted
St. Barts' growth, upending St. Barts' economy
and turning the colony into a financial burden.
Sweden sold St. Barts back to France, who gave
the island its modern French moniker, Saint-Barthélemy.
St. Barts remains a French holding as a dependent
of the island of Guadeloupe.
The St. Barts of today remains
in many ways how it would have looked centuries
ago. Most of its few thousand current residents
are descendent from the original Norman and Breton
settlers who came to St. Barts in the 1600s. Tourism
is an important part of the island's economy,
but local officials have done much to control
growth on St. Barts and to preserve its natural
beauty. St. Barts is very much an unspoiled paradise.
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