| Saint Lucia was probably
first visited by Europeans about 1500. The first successful colony was established
in 1635 by the French, who signed a treaty with the indigenous Carib people
in 1660. England held the island between 1663 and 1667, and the island changed
hands between England and France several more times before it was finally
ceded to the British in 1814. Representative government was introduced in
1924. From 1958 to 1962 Saint Lucia was a member of the Federation of the
West Indies. In 1967 it became a member of the West Indies Associated States
with full internal self-government. On February 22, 1979, Saint Lucia became
an independent state within the Commonwealth of Nations. In 1992 the poet
Derek Walcott, a native of Castries, won the Nobel Prize for literature.
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