The Settlement of the British Virgin Islands, 1672–1740

By using primary documents of the English Leeward Islands Colony, a more accurate and complete picture of frontier settlement in marginal areas of the Caribbean has been painted. The development of population, the English and later British governmental structure is traced, as well as trade in the island group today known as the British Virgin Islands, from a 1672 battle with a mixed group of settlers under the Dutch to the beginnings of a stable population by about 1700 and a meaningful government in the decades that follow. The English military action against the Dutch fort on Tortola in the year 1672, as part of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, is often presented in popular sources such as Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Brittanica as a kind of “founding moment” for the English settlement, akin to the capture of Jamaica in 1655. In reality, the early presence (and, sometimes, absence) of English-descended people, of those African people who they often forcibly brought with them, and of English government, society or military is more checkered. Though limited by the nature of the records, created by the white enslavers, the lives of those of African descent brought to these islands will be considered where possible.