<P> The first Europeans to occupy St. Vincent were the French . However, following a series of wars and peace treaties, the islands were eventually ceded to the British . While the English were the first to lay claim to St. Vincent in 1627, the French centered on the island of Martinique would be the first European settlers on the island when they established their first colony at Barrouallie on the Leeward side of St. Vincent in 1719 . The French settlers cultivated coffee, tobacco, indigo, corn, and sugar on plantations worked by African slaves . </P> <P> St. Vincent was ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Paris (1763), after which friction between the British and the Caribs led to the First Carib War . The island was restored to French rule in 1779 and regained by the British under the Treaty of Versailles (1783). Between 1795 and 1796, with French support from Martinique, the Black Caribs, led by their chief, Joseph Chatoyer, fought a series of battles against the British . Their uprising was eventually put down, however, resulting in almost 5,000 Black Caribs being exiled to the tiny island of Baliceaux off the coast of Bequia . Conflict between the British and the black Caribs continued until 1796, when General Abercrombie crushed a revolt fomented by the French radical Victor Hugues . The British deported more than 5,000 black Caribs to Roatán, an island off the coast of Honduras . </P> <P> Like the French before them, the British also used African slaves to work plantations of sugar, coffee, indigo, tobacco, cotton and cocoa until full emancipation in 1838 . The economy then went into a period of decline with many landowners abandoning their estates and leaving the land to be cultivated by liberated slaves . Life was made even harder following two eruptions of the La Soufriere volcano in 1812 and 1902 when much of the island was destroyed and many people were killed . In 1979 it erupted again, this time with no fatalities . In the same year, St Vincent and The Grenadines gained full independence from Britain, while remaining a member of the Commonwealth of Nations . </P> <P> From 1763 until independence, St. Vincent passed through various stages of colonial status under the British . A representative assembly was authorized in 1776 . Decades after the success of the Haitian Revolution, the British abolished slavery in 1834 . The resulting labour shortages on the plantations attracted Portuguese immigrants in the 1840s and East Indians in the 1860s as laborers . Conditions remained harsh for both former slaves and immigrant agricultural workers, as depressed world sugar prices kept the economy stagnant until the turn of the 20th century . </P>

When did st vincent and the grenadines became independent