West Indies

West Indies

Area	239,681 km2 (92,541 sq mi)
Population	43,163,817[1][2]
Population density	151.5/km2 (392/sq mi)
Ethnic groups	Amerindian, Afro-Caribbean, White Caribbeans, Indo-Caribbean, Latino or Hispanic (Spanish, Portuguese, Mestizo, Mulatto, Pardo, and Zambo), Chinese, Jewish, Arab, Javanese,[3] Hmong, Multiracial
Religions	73.5% Christianity 52.3% Catholicism 20.2% Protestantism 1.0% other Christian 20.6% no religion 2.5% folk religions 2.1% Hinduism 1.3% others[4]
Demonym	West Indian, Caribbean
Countries	13  Antigua and Barbuda  Bahamas  Barbados  Cuba  Dominica  Dominican Republic  Grenada  Haiti  Jamaica  Saint Kitts and Nevis  Saint Lucia  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines  Trinidad and Tobago
Dependencies	18  Anguilla (UK)  Aruba (Netherlands)  Bonaire (Netherlands)  British Virgin Islands (UK)  Cayman Islands (UK)  Curaçao (Netherlands)  Guadeloupe (France)  Martinique (France)  Montserrat (UK)  Haiti-Template:Country data Navassa Island (United States ) and (Haiti)  Puerto Rico (United States )  Saba (Netherlands)  Saint Barthélemy (France ) Saint Martin (France )  Sint Eustatius (Netherlands)  Sint Maarten (Netherlands)  Turks and Caicos Islands (UK)  US Virgin Islands (United States )
Languages	English, French, Spanish, Dutch, French Creoles, English Creoles, Dutch Creoles, Papiamento, Caribbean Hindi, Chinese, Danish and others
Time zones	00 to 00
Internet TLD	Multiple
Calling code	Multiple
Largest cities	List of metropolitan areas in the Caribbean Santo Domingo Havana Port-au-Prince San Juan Kingston Santiago de Cuba Santiago de los Caballeros Nassau Camagüey Cap-Haïtien
UN M49 code	029 – Caribbean 419 – Latin America 019 – Americas 001 – World

  East Indies

  Indies (Indian subcontinent and Myanmar)

  Western New Guinea

  West Indies

  Countries sometimes included in West Indies

The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island countries and 19 dependencies in three archipelagos: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Lucayan Archipelago.^[5]

The subregion includes all the islands in the Antilles, plus The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are in the North Atlantic Ocean. Nowadays, the term West Indies is often interchangeable with the term Caribbean, although the latter may also include some Central and South American mainland nations which have Caribbean coastlines or coastlines close to the Caribbean, such as Belize, French Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname, as well as the Atlantic island nation of Bermuda, all of which are geographically distinct from the three main island groups, but culturally related.

Origin and use of the term

In 1492, Christopher Columbus became the first European to record his arrival at the islands, where he is believed by historians to have first set foot on land in The Bahamas. After the first of the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas, Europeans began to use the term West Indies to distinguish this region from both the original "Indies" (i.e. India ) and the East Indies of South Asia and Southeast Asia.^[6][7][8]

History

Many cultures were indigenous to these islands, with evidence dating some of them back to the mid-6th millennium BCE.

In the late sixteenth century, French, English and Dutch merchants and privateers began operations in the Caribbean Sea, attacking Spanish and Portuguese shipping and coastal areas. They often took refuge and refitted their ships in the areas the Spanish could not conquer, including the islands of the Lesser Antilles, the northern coast of South America, including the mouth of the Orinoco, and the Atlantic Coast of Central America. In the Lesser Antilles, they managed to establish a foothold following the colonisation of St Kitts in 1624 and Barbados in 1626, and when the Sugar Revolution took off in the mid-seventeenth century, they brought in thousands of enslaved Africans to work the fields and mills as labourers. These enslaved Africans wrought a demographic revolution, replacing or joining with either the indigenous Caribs or the European settlers who were there as indentured servants.

The struggle between the northern Europeans and the Spanish spread southward in the mid to late seventeenth century, as English, Dutch, French and Spanish colonists, and in many cases, enslaved Africans first entered and then occupied the coast of The Guianas (which fell to the French, English and Dutch) and the Orinoco valley, which fell to the Spanish. The Dutch, allied with the Caribs of the Orinoco, would eventually carry the struggles deep into South America, first along the Orinoco and then along the northern reaches of the Amazon.

Island groups of the West Indies, in relation to the continental Americas

Since no European country had occupied much of Central America, gradually, the English of Jamaica established alliances with the Miskito Kingdom of modern-day Nicaragua and Honduras and then began logging on the coast of modern-day Belize. These interconnected commercial and diplomatic relations comprised the Western Caribbean Zone in place in the early eighteenth century. In the Miskito Kingdom, the rise to power of the Miskito-Zambos, who originated in the survivors of a rebellion aboard a slave ship in the 1640s and the introduction of enslaved Africans by British settlers within the Miskito area and in Belize, also transformed this area into one with a high percentage of persons of African descent as was found in most of the rest of the Caribbean.

From the 17th through the 19th century, the European colonial territories of the West Indies were the French West Indies, British West Indies, the Danish West Indies, the Netherlands Antilles (Dutch West Indies), and the Spanish West Indies.

In 1916, Denmark sold the Danish West Indies to the United States^[9] for US$25 million in gold, per the Treaty of the Danish West Indies. The Danish West Indies became an insular area of the U.S., called the United States Virgin Islands.

Between 1958 and 1962, the United Kingdom re-organised all their West Indies island territories (except the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas) into the West Indies Federation. They hoped that the Federation would coalesce into a single, independent nation. However, the Federation had limited powers, numerous practical problems, and a lack of popular support; consequently, it was dissolved by the British in 1963, with nine provinces eventually becoming independent sovereign states and four becoming current British Overseas Territories.

"West Indies" or "West India" was a part of the names of several companies of the 17th and 18th centuries, including the Danish West India Company, the Dutch West India Company, the French West India Company, and the Swedish West India Company.^[10]

West Indian is the official term used by the U.S. government to refer to people of the West Indies.^[11]

The term survives today mainly through the West Indies cricket team, representing all of the nations in the West Indian islands.

Geology

Caribbean Basin countries

The subduction of the South American Plate and part of the North American Plate beneath the Caribbean Plate produces both the Puerto Rico Trench, the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the active volcanoes of the Lesser Antilles (bottom left of the image, south of the Virgin Islands)

The West Indies are a geologically complex island system consisting of 7,000 islands and islets stretching over 3,000 km (2000 miles) from the Florida peninsula of North America south-southeast to the northern coast of Venezuela.^[12] These islands include active volcanoes, low-lying atolls, raised limestone islands, and large fragments of continental crust containing tall mountains and insular rivers.^[13] Each of the three archipelagos of the West Indies has a unique origin and geologic composition.

Greater Antilles

The Greater Antilles is geologically the oldest of the three archipelagos and includes both the largest islands (Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico) and the tallest mountains (Pico Duarte, Blue Mountain, Pic la Selle, Pico Turquino) in the Caribbean.^[14] The islands of the Greater Antilles are composed of strata of different geological ages including Precambrian fragmented remains of the North American Plate (older than 539 million years), Jurassic aged limestone (201.3-145 million years ago), as well as island arc deposits and oceanic crust from the Cretaceous (145-66 million years ago).^[15]

The Greater Antilles originated near the Isthmian region of present day Central America in the Late Cretaceous (commonly referred to as the Proto-Antilles), then drifted eastward arriving in their current location when colliding with the Bahama Platform of the North American Plate ca. 56 million years ago in the late Paleocene.^[16] This collision caused subduction and volcanism in the Proto-Antillean area and likely resulted in continental uplift of the Bahama Platform and changes in sea level.^[17] The Greater Antilles have continuously been exposed since the start of the Paleocene or at least since the Middle Eocene (66-40 million years ago), but which areas were above sea level throughout the history of the islands remains unresolved.^[18][16]

The oldest rocks in the Greater Antilles are located in Cuba. They consist of metamorphosed graywacke, argillite, tuff, mafic igneous extrusive flows, and carbonate rock.^[19] It is estimated that nearly 70% of Cuba consists of karst limestone.^[20] The Blue Mountains of Jamaica are a granite outcrop rising over 2,000 meters (6000'), while the rest of the island to the west consists mainly of karst limestone.^[20] Much of Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands were formed by the collision of the Caribbean Plate with the North American Plate and consist of 12 island arc terranes.^[21] These terranes consist of oceanic crust, volcanic and plutonic rock.^[21]

Lesser Antilles

The Lesser Antilles is a volcanic island arc rising along the leading edge of the Caribbean Plate due to the subduction of the Atlantic seafloor of the North American and South American plates. Major islands of the Lesser Antilles likely emerged less than 20 Ma, during the Miocene.^[14] The volcanic activity that formed these islands began in the Paleogene, after a period of volcanism in the Greater Antilles ended, and continues today.^[22] The main arc of the Lesser Antilles runs north from the coast of Venezuela to the Anegada Passage, a strait separating them from the Greater Antilles, and includes 19 active volcanoes.^[23]

Lucayan Archipelago

The Lucayan Archipelago includes The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, a chain of barrier reefs and low islands atop the Bahama Platform. The Bahama Platform is a carbonate block formed of marine sediments and fixed to the North American Plate.^[13] The emergent islands of the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos likely formed from accumulated deposits of wind-blown sediments during Pleistocene glacial periods of lower sea level.^[13]

Countries and territories by subregion and archipelago

Political map of the West Indies

Life expectancy in the West Indies in 2019 and 2021

Caribbean (core area)

Antilles

Greater Antilles

•  Cayman Islands (United Kingdom)
•  Cuba
•  Jamaica
• Template:Country data Navassa Island (United States )
•  Puerto Rico (United States )
• Hispaniola
  •  Dominican Republic
  •  Haiti

Lesser Antilles

Leeward Antilles

• ABC islands
  •  Aruba (Netherlands)
  •  Bonaire^* (Netherlands)
  •  Curaçao (Netherlands)
• Template:Country data Federal Dependencies of Venezuela (Venezuela)
• Template:Country data Nueva Esparta (Venezuela)

Leeward Islands

•  Anguilla (United Kingdom)
•  Antigua and Barbuda
•  Guadeloupe (France)
  • La Désirade
  • Les Saintes
  • Marie-Galante
•  Montserrat (United Kingdom)
•  Saint Barthélemy (France )
•  Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Saint Martin (France )
• SSS islands
  •  Saba^* (Netherlands)
  •  Sint Eustatius^* (Netherlands)
  •  Sint Maarten (Netherlands)
• Virgin Islands
  •  British Virgin Islands (United Kingdom)
  • Spanish Virgin Islands (United States )
  •  U.S. Virgin Islands (United States )

Windward Islands

•  Dominica
•  Grenada
  • Carriacou and Petite Martinique
•  Martinique (France)
•  Saint Lucia
•  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Isolated islands in the Lesser Antilles

•  Barbados^†
•  Trinidad and Tobago^†

Lucayan Archipelago

•  Bahamas
•  Turks and Caicos Islands (United Kingdom)

Isolated island in the Caribbean

• Template:Country data Federal Dependencies of Venezuela Aves Island (Venezuela)

Central America

•  Belize
•  Costa Rica
•  Guatemala
•  Honduras
•  Nicaragua
•  Panama
• Template:Country data Quintana Roo (Mexico^{^})
• Template:Country data Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina (Colombia)
  • Bajo Nuevo Bank^~
  • Serranilla Bank^~
• Template:Country data Yucatán (Mexico^{^})

Northern America

Main page: Place:Northern America

•  Bermuda^# (United Kingdom)

South America

Main page: Earth:South America

•  Colombia
•  French Guiana (France)
•  Guyana
•  Suriname
•  Venezuela

N.B.: Territories in italics are parts of transregional sovereign states or non-sovereign dependencies.

^* These three Dutch Caribbean territories form the BES islands.

^† Physiographically, these are continental islands not part of the volcanic Windward Islands arc. However, based on proximity, these islands are sometimes grouped with the Windward Islands culturally and politically.

^~ Disputed territories administered by Colombia.

^{^} The United Nations geoscheme includes Mexico in Central America.^[24]

^# Physiographically, Bermuda is an isolated oceanic island in the North Atlantic Ocean, not a part of the Caribbean, West Indies, North American continent or South American continent. Usually grouped with Northern American countries based on proximity; sometimes grouped with the West Indies culturally.

See also

• Caribbean Basin Initiative
• Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act
• Caribbean Community
• History of the British West Indies
• Spanish colonization of the Americas

References

Further reading

• Cave, Roderick, and R. Cave. 1978. "Early Printing and the Book Trade in the West Indies". Library Quarterly 48 (April): 163–92.
• Cromwell, Jesse. "More than Slaves and Sugar: Recent Historiography of the Trans-imperial Caribbean and Its Sinew Populations". History Compass (2014) 12#10 pp 770–783.
• Higman, Barry W. A Concise History of the Caribbean. (2011)
• Jones, Alfred Lewis (1905). "The West Indies". The Empire and the century. London: John Murray. pp. 877–882. 
• Martin, Tony, Caribbean History: From Pre-colonial Origins to the Present (2011)

[ ⚑ ] 21°59′00″N 79°02′00″W / 21.9833°N 79.0333°W / 21.9833; -79.0333

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