Antigua
In 1493, Columbus sighted Antigua from near Redonda and named it Antigua after the Church of Santa Maria de la Antigua in Seville. In 1632, the English arrived from nearby St. Kitts and established a settlement, the first of its kind in Antigua from Europe. The island remained British ruled until 1967 except for a brief French occupation.
Similar to other Caribbean lands, Antigua was turned into a sugar-producing island. African slaves were used until 1834, when slavery was abolished in Antigua.
The maintenance headquarters for the English fleet was located at the Dockyard in English Harbour during the 1700's and 1800's when the sugar producing islands were of enormous value to Europe. The senior officer of the Dockyard station in 1787 was Captain Nelson, who later became Lord Nelson, the famous victor of Trafalgar. Consequently today, The Dockyard and English Harbour are known as Nelson’s Dockyard. Prince William Henry, the Duke of Clarence, who later became King William IV, was stationed at English Harbour as a captain under Lord Nelson.
The status of Associated Statehood with Britain was first achieved in the Eastern Caribbean islands by Antigua in 1967. It formed a full government while the British would still be responsible for defense and some other aspects of external affairs. On November 1, 1981, Antigua and Barbuda was granted full independence.
Antigua is still a part of the Commonwealth of Nations and the 157th member of the United Nations. Other memberships owned by Antigua are in the Organization of American States (OAS), the Caribbean Common Market (Caricom), the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Barbuda
Barbuda's history has been intimately tied to that of Antigua for centuries. The first early attempts to settle Barbuda (by both the British and French) were failures, and it wasn't until 1666 that the British established a colony strong enough to survive the ravages of both nature and the Caribs.
In 1680, four years before he began cultivating sugar on Antigua, Christopher Codrington was granted (with his brother John) a lease to land in Barbuda. With subsequent leases that granted them additional rights to the substantial wreckage along Barbuda's reefs, they became the island's pre-eminent family. For much of the eighteenth century the Codrington land on Barbuda was used to produce food and to supply additional slave labour for the Codrington sugar plantations on Antigua, and so the Barbuda's fortunes rose and fell with those of its larger neighbour.
Testament to the influence of the Codringtons remains today, both in the island's place names and in its architectural remains. On Barbuda's highest point (124 feet) are the ruins of the Codrington estate, Highland House, and on the island's south coast still sits the 56-foot high Martello tower and castle, a fortress that was used both for defence and as a vantage from which to spot valuable shipwrecks on the outlying reefs.
