Language/English/Culture/British-Virgin-Islands-Timeline
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Rate this lesson:
Historical Timeline for British Virgin Islands - A chronology of key events
About 100 years before Jesus-Christ, the Arawaks, Indians of South America, settle on the archipelago.
Around the middle of the 15th century, they were joined and driven out by the Caribbean Indians.
- In 1493, Christopher Columbus discovered the archipelago and gave it the name of Virgin Islands.
- In 1648, the Dutch took control of the archipelago.
- In 1666, the Virgin Islands returned to British hands.
- In 1774, the archipelago adopted its first Constitution.
- In 1834, slavery was abolished.
- From 1871 to 1956, the islands were part of the Federation of Leeward Islands.
- In 1956, the archipelago became an English colony.
- In 1967, the archipelago gained a new Constitution and its autonomy.
- In 1977, the Constitution was amended, but the British Virgin Islands kept the status of a colony.
- In recent years, there has been talk of uniting the archipelago with the US Virgin Islands.