Saint Kitts and Nevis is a two-island federation in the northeastern Caribbean. It is the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere by both area (261 square kilometers) and population (roughly 53,000 people). The timezone is Atlantic Standard Time: UTC-4, year-round, no daylight saving.

The IANA identifier is America/St_Kitts.

The sugar islands

Saint Kitts and Nevis built their colonial economies on sugar. The British established the first successful English colony in the Caribbean on Saint Kitts in 1623, predating the more famous settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts by several years.

Sugar production depended on enslaved African labor. The islands’ populations were overwhelmingly enslaved for most of the colonial period, outnumbering European settlers significantly. The legacies of this era are present in the demographics, the culture, and the landscape: the ruins of sugar mills dot both islands.

The last sugar mill on Saint Kitts closed in 2005, ending 400 years of commercial sugar production. The economy has shifted entirely to tourism and offshore financial services.

Nevis and Alexander Hamilton

Nevis, the smaller of the two islands (separated from Saint Kitts by a 3-kilometer channel called The Narrows), is the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States and the subject of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2015 Broadway musical.

Hamilton was born in Charlestown, Nevis, in 1755 (some sources give 1757). He left the Caribbean for New York in 1772 and never returned. His experience growing up in the sugar economy of the Caribbean, witnessing slavery and the poverty of the free poor, shaped his views on trade, manufacturing, and the dangers of an economy dependent on a single crop.

The Hamilton House in Charlestown is a museum. Nevis’s connection to one of America’s founding documents, via the man who wrote much of The Federalist Papers, is the island’s most internationally recognized claim.

A federation on the edge

Saint Kitts and Nevis is a federation, but the relationship between the two islands has not always been smooth. Nevis has its own island assembly and its own premier. In 1998, Nevis held a referendum on secession from the federation. Approximately 62 percent voted in favor of independence, but the required threshold was two-thirds; the referendum failed by a small margin.

The question of whether Nevis might someday become the world’s smallest independent state remains formally open.

For developers

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