Saint Martin, one island, two countries

Salt, Spain and a treaty

Columbus sighted the island on 11 November 1493, St Martin of Tours’ feast day, and named it after him. Its natural salt lakes, valuable in Europe, made it worth fighting over, and it changed hands between the Dutch and the Spanish several times.^[1] Spain sent a fleet in 1638 to drive out the Dutch settlers and left a garrison, which gave up the island about ten years later.^[3]

On 23 March 1648 France and the Netherlands split the island with a treaty signed on Concordia Hill, which let people and goods move freely between the two parts.^[3] A local legend says the line was set where a French runner and a Dutch runner, starting from opposite ends, met, and that the French half is bigger because its runner was faster. The tourist office itself calls it a legend that never ends.^[3]

Two halves, two paths

The Dutch south joined the Dutch West Indies in 1828 and became part of the Netherlands Antilles in 1954. When the Antilles were dissolved on 10 October 2010, Sint Maarten became a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, like Aruba. It runs its own internal affairs with a 15-seat parliament and a prime minister; the Netherlands handles defence and foreign relations. Its official languages are English and Dutch.^[2]

The French north was for nearly two centuries a commune of Guadeloupe.^[4] On 7 December 2003, 76.3% of voters chose a status of its own, and an organic law of 21 February 2007 made Saint-Martin a separate overseas collectivity of France.^[4][1] French is its official language, and English is widely spoken.^[1]

In the EU, and not

The split runs through Europe’s rules too. Saint-Martin is one of the EU’s outermost regions, a full part of the Union like Guadeloupe or the Canary Islands.^[5] Sint Maarten is one of the EU’s overseas countries and territories, which are associated with the Union but not part of it or its single market.^[6]

Shops on both sides take euros and US dollars.^[3] The Dutch side also has its own currency: on 31 March 2025 it swapped the Netherlands Antillean guilder, which it shares with Curaçao in a monetary union, for a new Caribbean guilder pegged to the US dollar.^[7]

A border you barely see

There are no border posts and no identity checks. Flags, welcome signs and a few boundary markers show where the line is, and most road crossings aren’t marked at all, so you can cross it several times a day without noticing. An obelisk put up in 1948 marks 300 years of peaceful sharing.^[3]