Of all the constituent territories, or collectivities, that make up Overseas France,
the half-island of Saint Martin, in the eastern Caribbean Sea, is the smallest.
It is inaccurate to say that the island is split in half between French Saint Martin and Dutch Sint Marteen because the French “half” actually contains about 60% of the total land mass, or a whopping 20 square miles.
The population however is split more or less evenly. Many Americans and Europeans are familiar with the Dutch half which has a very large airport and a very well developed tourist infrastructure (before the ravages of Hurricane Irma in 2017). Despite the proper name in Dutch, most Americans refer to Sint Marteen as St. Martin and that is the name by which this tourist haven is mostly known. Ironically, the portion that actually is properly called Saint Martin sees comparatively few tourists.
The island of Saint Martin was first discovered, as so many Caribbean islands were, by Christopher Columbus, who may, or may not, have actually landed on the island. In any event, the sighting took place on the feast day for Saint Martin of Tours, and thus the name of the feast day was given to the newly sighted land.
If the island was populated at all at the time of discovery, it would have been populated by the Carib people who had previously displaced the more peaceful Arawak people. A lack of fresh water would have made permanent settlement difficult. Originally the attraction for the European powers, aside from bragging rights and denying territory to other nations, was salt collected from salt pans on the island.
The Dutch were the first to arrive with any serious intention of staying, on the 1620s, although the Spanish returned, briefly, in 1633. By 1648 the French and the Dutch agreed to divide the island and the manner in which this was accomplished is the matter of folklore and tall tales with no reliable historical record existing.
Interestingly, Saint Martin is the only island thus divided by two colonial powers.
Cyprus remains divided but one half of the island is operated as an independent nation. The French and British jointly administered the New Hebrides Islands, now the independent nation of Vanuatu, but there was no boundary line on any island or area, instead the entire island group was jointly, if confusingly, administered by both nations. Saint Martin stands unique in terms of being an island divided into separate overseas territories of European powers.
The main town on Saint Martin is Marigot, although the town is small as the entire population of French Saint Martin is just over 36,000.
Given the small size and limited fresh water resources, agriculture has never been a big part of the Saint Martin economy. Instead, as is certainly also the case with the Dutch Sint Marteen, tourism is the focus of the Saint Martin economy with some relatively small portion of the annual 1 million or more visitors a year arriving on the Dutch side of the island visiting the French side. There is an airport on the French side, L’Espérance Airport,