Montserrat’s very first settlers were the Tainos Indians, who lived in villages around the areas now known as Little Bay, Windward, Old Fort Point, Bluff, Dagenham Beach, Trants from 500 BC to 500 AD. Remains of the Tainos civilisation can be seen at the Montserrat Museum, in the shape of pottery and tools.

Taking its name from a Spanish abbey which Columbus named the island in honour of, Montserrat was first referred to as Alliougana, or “land of the prickly bush” by the Tainos, until the Spanish explorer came across the island on November 11th, 1493, on his way from Guadeloupe.

However, it is not until 1632 that the Montserrat settlement started, initiated by Thomas Warner who, along with his followers, had left England in 1624 to settle in St Kitts, where they wished to practice Catholicism, away from the English Anglican domination.

In 1636, in an effort to emphasise the British origins of the island, its first governor, Irishman Anthony Brisket, travelled to England to collect funds to build Montserrat’s first Anglican church. Rumour has it that St Anthony’s church, now lying in the Zone V town of Plymouth, was named by the governor himself, since the religion doesn’t count any saint named Anthony.

Slavery was first introduced on the island in 1651 via the English Guinea Company. However, it was not before the 18th century that Montserrat’s African population increased significantly, following the rise of the local sugar industry and the need for manpower.

In 1712, the battle of Runaway Ghaut saw George Wyke and his 400 men defend the island and its residents against the French, who attempted to invade Montserrat with an army of 3,500 men.

One of the actors of the slavery abolition, Olaudah Equiano was born in Nigeria in 1745 and sold as a slave and renamed Gustavus Vassa at 11 years old. His last master, Robert King of Philadelphia made him work as a Montserrat-based sailor and trader and, by 1766, Equiano had saved enough money to buy his freedom. This enabled him to travel to England to present his book, “The Interesting Narrative”, to the British citizens, where he exposed the cruel living conditions of the slaves in the British colonies.

Although the majority of the island’s white population was Irish during the peak of Montserrat’s sugar industry, it is actually the slaves who gave its significance to St Patrick’s Day on the island. In 1768, expecting their English and Celtic masters would be busy celebrating, a group of slaves was planning a mass rebellion for St Patrick’s Day. However, the word got to a white seamstress who swiftly reported the rumour, resulting in the execution of nine leaders.

Starting with a population of 523 slaves in 1672 and rising to 10,000 individuals in 1774 with the growth of the sugar industry, it is not until 1838 that the emancipation of the island’s 6,401 slaves was officially declared, despite the fact that the Emancipation law had been voted 4 years earlier, in 1834. Following that law, a 6 years apprentice scheme had been instaured where workers could carry on working for their former masters for a small pay. However, the scheme came to a halt after only 4 years, when it became apparent that the plantation owners had carried on mistreating their workers.

1869 saw the formation of the Montserrat Company by various investment partners, including descendants of Joseph Sturge IV, a Quaker who had acquired the Bransby Sugar Estate with the goal of becoming a leading example of wage-earning labour. At its peak, the estate counted over 4,000 acres of land around the island. Created by its successors, the Montserrat Company would itself become one of the island’s most important enterprise and landowner.

Succeeding the rise and fall of the sugar industry, Sea Island Cotton had become Montserrat’s primary economic resource by 1912, producing 402,000 pounds of lint over 2,000 acres of land. However, the difficult nature of the labour as well as the increasing pests issues led to the decline of the industry, which had totally disappeared by the end of the 1950s.

The 1943 election marked the first time that a black Montserratian was given a leadership position, with Robert William Griffith becoming Deputy Commissioner and official delegate to Britain. His position led him to create the island’s first trade union, as well as organising 1,800 paid labourers over 39 estates.

In 1936, Montserratians were only allowed to vote if they were literate, owned a property valued at a minimum of 100 pounds, and earned an annual income of 30 pounds or more. It was not until 1952 that Black Montserratians over 21 years of age were given the right to vote, regardless of their possessions.

After taking leadership over from Griffith in 1954, William Henry Bramble formed the island’s first political party, the Montserrat Labour Party, and managed to obtain a wage increase for the cotton workers. Bramble was also the country’s first Chief Minister, a role he held from January 1960 to December 1970. In 1978, leadership was won by John Alfred Osborne, who served for two terms before losing the 1991 elections. Osborne successfully re-entered the elections in 2001 and served as Montserrat’s Chief Minister until 2006, making him the island’s longest serving politician to date.

In 1979, Montserrat found itself in the spotlight of the music industry, following the creation of state-of-the-art castaway recording studio AIR Studios by Sir George Martin, which welcomed and developed the work of rock icons such as Michael Jackson, The Police, Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Dire Straits, Sir Elton John, Duran Duran, and Sir Paul McCartney. The studio prospered for a decade before being destroyed by Hurricane Hugo in September 1989, leaving only ruins of the iconic venue behind it. 

Hurricane Hugo had highly disastrous consequences on Montserrat, with a strength of 165 mph, mudslides and twenty foot-high waves destroying most of the island’s buildings, including Plymouth’s 180-foot stone jetty, as well as taking ten lives and injuring 89 people on its path. The hurricane stole the home of 3,000 islanders and left Montserrat without water, electricity, or telephonic communication for weeks.

Six years later, the island would be hit by yet another natural catastrophe: after three centuries of inactivity, on the 18th July 1995, the Soufrière Hills Volcano started generating steam out of an old lava dome, with a sound that could be heard from nearby villages. The volcano’s activity gradually increased overtime, generating explosions and ash falls on the island’s capital, until two years later, on 25 June 1997, where a brutal explosions and pyroclastic flows took the life of 19 people. This tragedy was followed by 75 more explosions over the following few months, and peaked on the 26th December 1997, when a lateral blast took 60 million cubic meters of dome and crater wall towards the South of the island, destroying everything on its way.

Montserratians were evacuated to neighbouring islands by the Royal Navy, resulting in two-third of the population emigrating from the island, including more than half moving to the UK. The tragedy also saw the resignation of Minister Bertrand Osborne.

After over a decade of inactivity, part of the volcano’s lava dome collapsed, resulting in a series of explosions and pyroclastic flows, damaging buildings in Cork Hill and Harris, and leaving a horseshoe-shaped crater on the volcano’s north flank.

After four years of low activity, the MVO lifted the access restrictions to Cork Hill, Richmond Hill, Delvins, Weekes, and Foxes Bay in August 2014, whilst the areas of St George’s and Plymouth remain to this day under strict control, any access necessitating permission from the Royal Montserrat Police.