Saba is the peak of a volcano that last erupted some five thousand years ago, leaving a steep-sided and now luxuriously vegetated island. Amerindians were the first visitors, coming to the island in long dug-out canoes as they made their way from the river deltas of Venezuela up the chain of eastern Caribbean islands. The first Amerindian settlers probably arrived around 700 AD and lived in small communities based around fishing and simple farming. A handful of their artefacts are displayed in the museum in Windwardside.

Columbus passed by the island in 1493 but didn't stop, and the island was largely ignored by European travellers until the Dutch laid claim to it in 1632, despatching a team from nearby St Eustatius to take up residence near Fort Bay in 1640. Unlike many islands in the area, the steep terrain meant that large sugar, tobacco or cotton plantations were not feasible, so development remained limited to a handful of small farms. Stone steps were carved down to Fort Bay to allow supplies to be brought in by ship, and remnants of the old trails and the stone walls built to enclose the farms can still be seen around the island.

Today, the island remains part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands , one of five Dutch islands in the Caribbean with their central administration in Curaçao. Its tiny population is divided fairly equally between the descendants of the black slaves brought in to work the fields and the white farm-owners who ran them, although Sabans are often outnumbered by a combination of students at the US-owned medical school, expatriates and day-tripping tourists.