Saint Barthelemy, universally known as St. Barts, is a French overseas collectivity of roughly 10,000 residents in the northeastern Caribbean. It runs on Atlantic Standard Time: UTC-4, year-round, no daylight saving. The IANA identifier is America/St_Barthelemy.

The island is roughly 25 square kilometers, one of the smaller inhabited islands in the Caribbean. Its capital, Gustavia, is named after Swedish King Gustav III, because St. Barts spent a period as a Swedish possession.

The Swedish interlude

Most of the Caribbean’s colonial history involves Spain, Britain, France, and the Netherlands. St. Barts holds a distinction: it was briefly Swedish.

France ceded the island to Sweden in 1784 in exchange for trading rights at Gothenburg. Sweden built a free port at Gustavia (named after King Gustav) and developed limited trade. The arrangement worked tolerably until it didn’t: Sweden sold the island back to France in 1878 following a local referendum.

The Swedish period left Gustavia its name, a Swedish architectural style in some older buildings, and a certain amount of heraldic complexity in the island’s official emblems. It is one of the more unlikely colonial experiments in Caribbean history.

UTC-4 year-round

St. Barts shares UTC-4 with neighboring French territory Saint Martin/Sint Maarten and with most other Eastern Caribbean islands. No DST.

At 18 degrees North latitude, St. Barts has less than 90 minutes of daylight variation across the year. The case for clock changes is nonexistent.

Being a French territory at UTC-4 means the island is four hours behind metropolitan France in winter and five hours behind in summer (because France observes DST, St. Barts does not). Business with Paris requires navigating this asymmetric gap.

The economy of exclusivity

St. Barts has positioned itself as one of the Caribbean’s most exclusive destinations. Gustavia’s harbor fills with superyachts during the season. The island hosts a New Year’s gathering known as one of the most expensive in the world; charter yachts and villas are booked years in advance.

This economy, unlike most Caribbean islands, does not depend primarily on mass tourism. The island’s runway is notoriously short, limiting commercial flights to small aircraft. Larger jets land on neighboring Saint Martin and passengers take ferries or small planes over. The difficulty of arriving is, to some degree, a feature rather than a bug.

For developers

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