St. Barth’s, a small island of the West Indies, was just emerging from ocean swell when Christophe Colombus officially discovered her in 1493. He assigns the island his brother’s name, Bartholoméo. However, it was already occupied by the Caribbean Indians and the fights were frequent between the two groups. With long periods of drought, and hurricanes the first white population suffered great hardships. The Caribs slaughtered most of these immigrants.

Another wave of immigrants came from French coasts such as Brittany, Vendée and Normandy. 100 years passed under French rule. In 1785, King Louis XVI traded St. Barth’s and its population of white people and slaves to Sweden, in exchange to gain free port access to Sweden’s Goteborg warehouses.
The Swedish then made St. Barth’s a free port in hopes of turning it into a major trading center, whereby naming its capital Gustavia, in honor of the Swedish King Gustav III. The island prospered for three following decades.

In 1878 the French repossessed the island from the Swedes with the condition that St. Barth’s would never suffer taxation and this treaty remained intact.