Antigua's first people were the nomadic Ciboney, originally from present-day Venezuela, whose earliest traces on the island date from around 3100 BC. By the early years AD the Ciboney had been replaced by Arawak-speaking Amerindians from the same region.

The first European sighting of Antigua came in 1493 when Columbus sailed close by, naming the island Santa Maria la Antigua. The island remained uninhabited for over a century until, in 1624, the first British settlement in the West Indies was established on the island of St Kitts, and the British laid claim to nearby Antigua and Barbuda. Within a decade, settlers at Falmouth on the south coast had experimented with a number of crops before settling on sugar , which was to guarantee the island its future wealth. For the next two hundred years, sugar was to remain the country's dominant industry, bringing enormous wealth to the planters .

Unlike most of Britain's West Indian colonies, Antigua remained British throughout the colonial era. This was due, in large part, to the massive fortifications built around it, the major ones at places like Shirley Heights on the south coast.

As the centuries passed, conditions for the slaves who worked the plantations improved very slowly. Even after the abolition of slavery in 1834, many were obliged to continue to labor at the sugar estates, for wages that were insufficient to provide even the miserly levels of food, housing and care formerly offered under slavery.