The Island That Agreed to Disagree

A Dutch soldier and a French soldier once settled a land dispute the way Caribbean people have traditionally preferred to settle things: with a walk. According to the legend both sides still tell, they were placed back-to-back at Oyster Pond and walked in opposite directions around the island's perimeter. Wherever they met — some hours later — became the border. The French soldier allegedly walked further and so France got the larger share: 53 km² to the Netherlands' 34 km². The story is almost certainly apocryphal. The actual Treaty of Concordia was a pragmatic negotiation between two small colonial garrisons with no ability to wage a meaningful war. But the legend endures because something true lives inside it: Sint Maarten and Saint Martin really have maintained one of the world's most open international borders for nearly four centuries.

There is no passport control between the Dutch and French sides. No customs checkpoint, no gate, no fence — not even a sign that says "now entering France." You drive across an invisible line and the road signs switch from English to French, the restaurants shift from Dutch-Caribbean to French Creole, and the currency changes from US dollars to euros. Fort Amsterdam was the first Dutch fort in the entire Caribbean — and then changed hands sixteen times between the Dutch, French and English before both nations eventually agreed to share the island and move on. The Concordia Monument, a modest white obelisk at the border road, marks the point of agreement so durably that it appears on the Sint Maarten flag and coat of arms: one of the very few border monuments in the world to earn that distinction. The whole island is 87 km². It is divided between two sovereign nations, governed in three languages, uses two currencies, and sends representatives to two national parliaments on two separate continents. It has never had a wall.