AbstractDivided between France and Holland since 1648, the small island community of St Martin has grown and prospered in recent decades largely because of tourism. France which incorporates its part, Saint Martin, as a municipality in the Department of Guadeloupe has been generous with public funds and tax concessions to those who invest in the dependency. The Kingdom of the Netherlands, the governments of its constituent parts (Holland and the Netherlands Antilles), has been more generous with authority than with money. So Dutch Sint Maarten has enjoyed much greater political and administrative autonomy than its northern neighbour, but it has to depend on investment from private interests, American and European. Indeed, it has lacked sufficient public capital even for infrastructure and social services, including education. The governments of both sides have neglected joint planning and other coordinated efforts to develop the island. The Dutch side has been committed to laissez‐faire private enterprise and so personnel development in the public service has been minimal. This has disposed the government of the French side to limit joint ventures with the Dutch government. The population is large enough and the revenues are high enough to provide adequate numbers of public officials, but tourism has attracted, in the 1970s and 80s, many of the more able and ambitious. These considerations set the two sides of St Martin apart from other West Indian micro‐states, most of which have not experienced as much success in developing and maintaining tourism. St Martin is unique in another way. It is different from other English‐speaking islands because of its French and Dutch institutions. It is quite different from other French and Dutch islands (Saba and St Eustatius excepted) because of the English language and other cultural influ