Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States the Caribbean Community. OECS currently has ten Eastern Caribbean members, which together form a near-continuous archipelago across the Leeward Islands and Windward Islands. Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands and Martinique are only associate members of OECS. Diplomatic missions of the OECS do not represent the associate members. For all other purposes, associate members are treated as equals of full members. Six of the members were formerly colonies of the United Kingdom. Three others, Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, and Montserrat remain overseas territories of the UK while Martinique, is a part of the French Republic as an overseas department and
Martinique Spain had little interest in the territory. On 15 September 1635, Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc, French governor of the island of St. Kitts, landed in the harbor of St. Pierre with 150 French settlers after being driven off St. Kitts by the English. D'Esnambuc claimed Martinique for the French King Louis XIII and the French "Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique" (Company of the American Islands), and established the first European settlement at Fort Saint-Pierre (now St. Pierre). D'Esnambuc died in 1636, leaving the company and Martinique in the hands of his nephew, Jacques Dyel du Parquet, who in 1637, became governor