The History of the British Virgin Islands is usually, for convenience, broken up into five separate periods:
- Pre-Columbian Amerindian settlement, up to an uncertain date
- Nascent European settlement, from approximately 1612 until 1672
- British control, from 1672 until 1834
- Emancipation, from 1834 until 1950
- The modern state, from 1950 to present day
These time periods are used for convenience only. There appears to be an uncertain period of time from when the last Arawaks left what would later be called the British Virgin Islands until the first Europeans started to settle there in the early 17th century, but each period commences with a dramatic change from the time period which precedes it, and so is a convenient way to compartmentalise the subject.
Read more about History Of The British Virgin Islands: Pre-Columbian Settlement, 1492 - Early European Exploration, 1672 - British Colonisation, Slavery Economy, 1834 - Emancipation, Modern Developments
Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history, british, virgin and/or islands:
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.”
—Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“It’s like the Beatles coming together again—let’s hope they don’t go on a world tour.”
—Matt Frei, British journalist. Quoted in Listener (London, June 21, 1990)
“Why is it every careerist tries to turn his mother into a Madonna—to prove his intellect is a virgin birth, papa had nothing to do with it? It’s the sign of the misogynist.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)