Did You Know… St. Maarten Is Not The Only Divided Caribbean Island?
The Caribbean as Great Power Battlefield
In the 17th century, many European nations tried to expand their empires in the strategically positioned Caribbean. Many islands belonged to various countries over time – for example, St. Maartens neighbor the United States Virgin Islands changed from Spanish to Dutch, Danish and American. St. Maarten / St. Martin was (re)conquered by the Spanish from 1633 to 1648. St. Lucia was so often taken and retaken between France and Britain it gave her the nickname “Helen of the West Indies”, likening it to Helen of Troy, for whom wars were fought.
In case of some islands, it even led to a division of an island between great powers. St. Maarten / St. Martin clearly is one of them, still divided because of geopolitical strategical reasons of 1648. Because of it, it holds the world record as smallest landmass divided between two countries. But this Caribbean getaway is not the only one with a history of geographical division.
More Divided Islands in the Caribbean
Sometimes, like on Trinidad, several parts governed by different nations occurred because multiple powers were fighting each other for a long time.
Others, like St. Maarten / St. Martin did in 1648, created a treaty demarcating borders. Amongst those is St. Kitts, whose division between France and Britain as of 1625 eventually was resolved to the advantage of the latter before the country became fully independent in 1983.
It is no coincidence that of the very few islands in the world divided amongst multiple countries, another still is in the Caribbean. Also the island of Hispaniola was divided in two in 1697 at the treaty of Rijswijk. It officially ceded the western part (now Haiti) to France, while the eastern part remained Spanish. Whereas Haiti was to become the first independent nation of the Caribbean in 1802, the Spanish part would also see French, Haitian and American control respectively until independence in 1924. A big difference with St. Maarten / St. Martin, whose borders have been open for over three centuries, is that those on between the countries on Hispaniola are strictly maintained.
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