The island of Anguilla, so called from its snake-like form, is said to have been discovered and colonised by the English this year [1650]: it was filled with alligators and noxious animals, but the soil was good for raising tobacco and corn and the cattle imported multiplied very fast. It was not colonised under any public encouragement, each planter laboured for himself, and the island was frequently plundered by marauders.

¿ Captain Thomas Southey, Chronological History of the West Indies

A while ago, Bob Conrich, a Bermuda Maritime Museum member and long-time Anguillian resident, invited me to visit that revolutionary island in the Lesser Antilles, to speak with the Anguilla Archaeological and Historical Society about those very subjects, as well as the value of museums to modern societies.

With the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla is our nearest neighbour in the Caribbean, for the Bahamas with the Turks and Caicos, nearer still, are not geographically part of that sea, which lies to the south of the "Great Bay of North America", now the "Gulf of Mexico".

Until the American Revolution of 1774-1783, the Caribbean was the great profit-centre of the British Empire in the Americas, with the sugar mills of the Antilles, from the "Little Britain" of Barbados in the southeast to the major plantations of Jamaica in the northwest, sending millionaire-making produce annually for many decades to London.

The sugar, molasses and rum of those islands provided the fuel, by way of new capital, for the Industrial Revolution in Britain, a non-military change that was nonetheless as devastating to its culture and people as would have been a real war.

The reprehensible trade in slaves from western Africa fuelled the production of the sugar for more than two centuries until the trade was abolished, in British territories at least, in 1807, with the owning of slaves made illegal in 1834. For a period, Anguilla added to the sugar production, but the cessation of slavery ended that industry, which in all likelihood would not have long survived, given the small size of the island and its imperfect geology for major agricultural purposes.

A few miles north of the mountainous St. Maarten, Anguilla is primarily limestone and coral formations, mixed with some volcanic material, probably sent over by aerial bombardments in the creation of the former place. Valleys are found in some areas and these have been used for agriculture since the coming of the first inhabitants, the Arawaks from South America, several thousand years ago.

Like Bermuda, some of its soil originates from the Sahara to the east and a haze in Anguilla today is said often to be composed of dust from that same source. Outside the valleys, the land is rocky and today home to scrub vegetation, though it may have supported great forests in the past, for Anguilla is an ancient place, thought to be a part of an older South American continent. The fossil evidence of the world's largest rat (Amblyrhiza inundata) at Anguilla points to that continental association.

In some places, such as Road Bay, ponds at sea level were conducive to the making of salt, which was produced into the 1980s, when currency devaluations of the Trinidad and Tobago dollar, as well as mechanised reaping elsewhere, returned the shallow lakes to their prehistoric settings.

On Sombrero Island to the northwest, the brown booby and other sea birds had compiled a capping of phosphate of lime over thousands of years of diligent depositions. In the 19th century, American and other mining companies almost entirely removed that fossilised dung heap for use as fertiliser in farming. With no beaches or landing places, the barren island was returned to its original inhabitants by default and is today a nature reserve for those sea birds, who are no doubt busily rebuilding the phosphate deposits.

Other industries, such as sea-island cotton, the best type of that plant worldwide, were tried, but in the early 1920s, a boll weevil destroyed the crops. It is named Barbadian cotton (Gossypium barbadense), but one account from 1920s suggests that the plant may be endemic to Anguilla, from whence its seeds were exported to the famous "Sea Islands" off the coast of South Carolina.

Tobacco was also grown for a period. Today there is some farming, but the attention of many Anguillians is focused on the cultivation of visitors, with tourism now the top industry, utilising the splendid beaches of the island. In former decades many Anguillians were forced overseas for employment, as droughts and troubles affected the place; some probably came to Bermuda.

Anguilla may be compared to Bermuda, except that we had no prehistoric occupants, other than sea birds, a snail and a lizard, and after 1505, some Spanish swine. The island is twice the size of Bermuda, with 40 square miles, but less than one third of the population, at under 15,000. Work permits account for another 3,500 souls, some with dependants. Like Bermuda, it is an importation economy, with most necessities brought in by sea.

In matters of heritage, Anguilla has evidence and artifacts from the prehistoric period, lacking at Bermuda, and it has its fair share of shipwrecks, some historic buildings and a number of nature reserves and national parks, the last managed by its National Trust.

Some of the artifacts are on loving display at the charming Heritage Collection Museum of Colville Petty, OBE, at the northern end of Anguilla. The Archaeological and Historical Society is hoping to expand its activities and museum in the near future.

In the meantime, Anguilla perhaps has the distinction of having had the longest revolution in British America, for starting in 1967 and ending in 1980, it outlasted the major one of the 13 American colonies by several years. However, in a sense the revolution began in 1871, when Anguilla was joined politically by Britain to St. Kitts and Nevis; objections to this arrangement began the very next year.

Ultimately, the Anguillians reached their goal of separation from St. Kitts and Nevis and the island reverted to British administration, or as an eminent local quipped: "We like to say that in 1980, Anguilla at last achieved 'colony' status." Like Bermuda, Anguilla is now an Overseas Territory and its people have the right to a European Community passport and all the rights of freedom and independence that that travel document presents: Viva la Revolution!, especially for students and younger folk.

* * *

Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.