Montserrat is about 16 km 10 mi long and 11 km 7 mi wide, with roughly 40 km 25 mi of coastline. Between and , two-thirds of the island's population was forced to flee, mostly to the United Kingdom , leaving fewer than 1, people on the island in The population had increased to nearly 5, by Bramble Airport , the remnants of which were buried by flows from further volcanic activity on 11 February An exclusion zone was imposed, encompassing the southern part of the island as far north as parts of the Belham Valley, because of the size of the existing volcanic dome and the resulting possibility of pyroclastic activity.
Visitors are generally not permitted to enter the exclusion zone, but a view of destroyed Plymouth can be seen from the top of Garibaldi Hill in Isles Bay. The volcano has been relatively quiet since early and continues to be closely monitored by the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. In , it was announced that planning would begin on a new town and port at Little Bay on the northwest coast of the island, and the centre of government and businesses was moved temporarily to Brades. Archaeological field work in in Montserrat's Centre Hills indicated that there had been an Archaic pre- Arawak occupation between and BCE.
In , nine petroglyphs were discovered by local residents hiking in a wooded area near Soldier Ghaut. In November , Christopher Columbus passed Montserrat on his second voyage , after being told that the island was unoccupied because of raids by the Caribs.
A number of Irishmen settled in Montserrat in The preponderance of Anglo-Irish in the first wave of European settlers led a leading legal scholar to remark that a "nice question" is whether the original settlers took with them the law of the Kingdom of Ireland insofar as it differed from the law of the Kingdom of England. The Irish being historical allies of the French , especially in their qualified disdain of the English, invited the French to claim the island in , although no troops were sent by France to maintain control.
A neo-feudal colony developed amongst the so-called " redlegs ". By the late 18th century, numerous plantations had been developed on the island. There was a brief French attack on Montserrat in In , the people of Montserrat made St Patrick's Day a ten-day public holiday to commemorate the uprising.
