Not to be confused with the Dominican Republic. The island was settled by the Arawak arriving from South America in the fifth century. The Kalinago displaced the Arawak by the 15th century. Columbus is said to have passed the island on Sunday, 3 Haitian cornmeal porridge 1493.
It was later colonised by Europeans, predominantly by the French from the 1690s to 1763. Dominica has been nicknamed the “Nature Island of the Caribbean” for its natural environment. Dominica first emerged from the sea during the Oligocene era approximately 26 million years ago, making it one of the last Caribbean islands to be formed by volcanic activity. Dominica’s precolonial indigenous inhabitants were the Island Carib people, who are thought to have driven out the previous Arawak population. Christopher Columbus, sailing for Spain, named the island as Dominica, after the Latin term dies Dominica for Sunday, the day on which the Spanish first saw it in November 1493.
Spain had little success in colonising Dominica. In 1632, the French Compagnie des Îles de l’Amérique claimed it and other “Petites Antilles” for France, but no physical occupation took place. In 1660, the French and English agreed that Dominica and St. Vincent should not be settled, but instead left to the Carib as neutral territory. But its natural resources attracted expeditions of English and French foresters, who began harvesting timber. In 1715, a revolt of “poor white” smallholders in the north of Martinique, known as La Gaoulé, caused settlers to migrate to southern Dominique, where they set up smallholdings. Meanwhile, French families and others from Guadeloupe settled in the north.
In 1761, during the Seven Years’ War in Europe, a British expedition against Dominica led by Andrew Rollo conquered the island, along with several other Caribbean islands. In 1778 the French, with the active co-operation of the population, began the re-capture of Dominica. Great Britain established a small colony in 1805. It used Dominica as part of the triangular trade, by which slaves were imported and sold as labour in the islands as part of a trade that included producing and shipping sugar and coffee as commodity crops to Europe. The best documented slave plantation on the island is Hillsborough Estate, which had 71 male and 68 female slaves. In 1835, the first three men of African descent were elected to the legislative assembly of Dominica. Many slaves from the neighbouring French colonial islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique fled to Dominica.
In 1838, Dominica became the first colony of the British West Indies to have an elected legislature controlled by an ethnic African majority. In 1865, after much agitation and tension, the colonial office replaced the elective assembly with one made up of one-half members who were elected and one-half who were appointed. Planters, who were allied with colonial administrators, outmanoeuvred the elected legislators on many occasions. In 1871, Dominica became part of the British Leeward Islands. In World War I, many Dominicans, mainly the sons of small farmers, volunteered to fight in Europe for the British Empire. Until 1958, Dominica was governed as part of the British Windward Islands. Caribbean islands sought independence from 1958 to 1962, and Dominica became a province of the short-lived West Indies Federation in 1958.
In mid-1979, political discontent with Founding Prime Minister Patrick John’s administration climaxed in a civilian coup and ended in the passage of a Motion of No Confidence in the House of Assembly, Dominica’s legislature, against John, collapsing the John administration. In 1981, Charles’s government was threatened with two attempted coups. The first was led by Frederick Newton, commander of the Military of Dominica, who organised an attack on the police headquarters in Roseau which resulted in the death of a police officer. The Charles government supported the 1983 American Invasion of Grenada, earning Dominica praise from the Reagan administration and an increase in financial aid. By the middle of the 1980s, the economy had begun to recover, before weakening again due to a decrease in banana prices. In the 31 January 2000 general election, the UWP were defeated by a coalition of the DLP, led by left-leaning Roosevelt B.
Rosie” Douglas and the Dominica Freedom Party led by former trade union leader, Charles Savarin. In the 2009 election, the DLP won 18 of 21 seats. The UWP claimed campaign improprieties and embarked on a wide range of protest actions, including boycott of Parliament. Nicholas Liverpool who was reportedly removed from office due to ill health.
In December 2019, incumbent Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit won his fourth consecutive general election eighteen seats to three, becoming the first Dominica Prime Minister ever to do so. The size of the country is about 289. Known as “The Nature Island of the Caribbean” due to its lush scenery and varied flora and fauna, Dominica is largely covered by rainforest and is home to the world’s second-largest hot spring, Boiling Lake. The main centres tend to be located around the coast, with the mountainous interior sparsely populated. Dominica is especially vulnerable to hurricanes as the island is located in what is referred to as the hurricane region. In 1979, Hurricane David struck the island as a Category 4 hurricane, causing widespread and extreme damage. Dominica’s national bird and is endemic to its mountain forests.
Dominica has recorded at least four species of snakes and 11 species of lizards. Dominica is home to 195 species of birds, because of the isolated location of Dominica this is a lesser number compared to Trinidad which is located closer to mainland South-America with 472 bird species. The Caribbean Sea offshore of the island of Dominica is home to many cetaceans. Most notably a group of sperm whales live in this area year-round. Dominica is a parliamentary democracy within the Commonwealth of Nations. Unlike other former British colonies in the region, Dominica was never a Commonwealth realm, instead becoming a republic on independence.