Saint Lucia

Saint Lucia is an island country in the eastern Caribbean Sea, part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, lying north or northeast of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique, and covers 617 square kilometers. Castries is the capital and largest city of a country whose population exceeded 184,100 as of mid-2023. Arawaks were the first documented inhabitants, around 200 to 400 AD, followed by the Kalinago around 800 AD; French colonists arrived first among Europeans, signing a 1660 treaty with native Caribs, and England took control in 1663, after which England and France fought fourteen times for control of the island before Britain secured permanent control in 1814. Saint Lucia gained independence on 22 February 1979 while remaining a Commonwealth realm, and today is a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as monarch, represented locally by a governor-general, and a prime minister who is typically the leader of the majority party in the House of Assembly; the country belongs to the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, the Caribbean Community and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States.