n.
Island (pop., 2001 est.: 3,600) and British crown colony, West Indies.
Situated in the eastern Caribbean Sea, it occupies an area of 40 sq mi (102 sq km); it is 11 mi (18 km) long and 7 mi (11 km) wide. It was visited and named by Christopher Columbus in 1493 and was colonized by the British and Irish in 1632. France later held it briefly, but from 1783 it remained British. Its colonial economy was based on cotton and sugar plantations that used African slave labour. It was part of the colony of Leeward Islands from 1871 to 1956 and then of the Federation of the West Indies from 1958 to 1962. It was rebuilt after a devastating hurricane in 1989. A major eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano in 1996 led to the evacuation of the southern half of the island and the abandonment of its capital, Plymouth. By 1998 more than two-thirds of its mid-1990s population had left the island.