Montserrat – the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean and its volcano
Montserrat was inhabited by Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean long before Europeans arrived. Christopher Columbus sighted the island in 1493 and named it after the monastery of Montserrat near Barcelona.
In 1632 English colonists from neighbouring Saint Kitts began to settle Montserrat, among them many Irish Catholics. Their influence gave the island the nickname "Emerald Isle of the Caribbean", still reflected in family names, place names and the shamrock on the island's emblems. Like its neighbours, Montserrat developed a plantation economy based on sugar and the labour of enslaved Africans. A planned uprising by enslaved people on St Patrick's Day 1768 was discovered and brutally suppressed; today St Patrick's Day is a public holiday that also remembers this resistance. Slavery ended in the British Empire in the 1830s, and later limes and cotton became important crops.
In the twentieth century Montserrat remained a British colony, now a British Overseas Territory. In the 1980s, George Martin's AIR Studios attracted world-famous musicians to the island. Hurricane Hugo caused heavy damage in 1989, but the greatest turning point came in 1995, when the long-dormant Soufrière Hills volcano erupted. The capital Plymouth was buried and abandoned, the southern part of the island became an exclusion zone, and a large share of the population left for other islands or Britain.
Today Montserrat is shaped by its African and Irish heritage, the volcano that redrew its map and a small but close-knit community rebuilding in the north.
Do you have memories or family stories from Montserrat? Share them with other members in the Local History section.