Many cultures were indigenous to these islands, with evidence dating some of them back to the mid-6th millennium BCE.
In the late 16th century, French, English and Dutch merchants and privateers began operations in theCaribbean 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 theOrinoco, and the Atlantic Coast of Central America. In the Lesser Antilles, they managed to establish a foothold following the colonisation ofSaint Kitts in 1624 andBarbados in 1626, and when theSugar Revolution took off in the mid-17th 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 asindentured 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 ofThe 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 theAmazon.
Island groups of the West Indies, in relation to the continentalAmericas
Since no European country had occupied much of Central America, gradually, the English of Jamaica established alliances with theMiskito Kingdom of modern-dayNicaragua andHonduras and then began logging on the coast of modern-dayBelize. These interconnected commercial and diplomatic relations comprised theWestern Caribbean Zone in place in the early-18th century. In the Miskito Kingdom, the rise to power of theMiskito-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.
Between 1958 and 1962, the United Kingdom re-organised all their West Indies island territories (except theBritish Virgin Islands andThe Bahamas) into theWest Indies Federation. They hoped that the Federation would coalesce into a single, independent nation. 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 currentBritish Overseas Territories.
The West Indies are a geologically complex island system consisting of 7,000 islands andislets stretching over 3,000 km (2000 miles) from theFlorida peninsula ofNorth America south-southeast to the northern coast ofVenezuela.[15] These islands include activevolcanoes, low-lyingatolls, raisedlimestone islands, and large fragments ofcontinental crust containing tall mountains and insular rivers.[16] Each of the threearchipelagos of the West Indies has a unique origin and geologic composition.
The Greater Antilles originated near the Isthmian region of present-dayCentral America in theLate 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 latePaleocene.[19] 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.[20] The Greater Antilles have continuously been exposed since the start of thePaleocene or at least since the MiddleEocene (66–40 million years ago), but which areas were above sea level throughout the history of the islands remains unresolved.[21][19]
The oldest rocks in the Greater Antilles are located in Cuba. They consist ofmetamorphosedgraywacke,argillite,tuff,maficigneous extrusive flows, andcarbonate rock.[22] It is estimated that nearly 70% of Cuba consists of karstlimestone.[23] The Blue Mountains of Jamaica are agranite outcrop rising over 2,000 meters (6000'), while the rest of the island to the west consists mainly ofkarst limestone.[23] 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 12island arcterranes.[24] These terranes consist ofoceanic crust, volcanic andplutonic rock.[24]
TheLesser Antilles is a volcanicisland arc rising along the leading edge of theCaribbean Plate due to the subduction of the Atlantic seafloor of the North American andSouth American plates. Major islands of the Lesser Antilles likely emerged less than 20 Ma, during theMiocene.[17] The volcanic activity that formed these islands began in the Paleogene, after a period ofvolcanism in the Greater Antilles ended, and continues today.[25] The main arc of the Lesser Antilles runs north from the coast ofVenezuela to theAnegada Passage, astrait separating them from the Greater Antilles, and includes 19 active volcanoes.[26]
TheLucayan Archipelago includesThe Bahamas and theTurks and Caicos Islands, a chain ofbarrier 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.[16] The emergent islands of The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos likely formed from accumulated deposits of wind-blown sediments duringPleistocene glacial periods of lower sea level.[16]
Countries and territories by subregion and archipelago
^abWoods, Charles Arthur; Sergile, Florence Etienne, eds. (2001).Biogeography of the West Indies : patterns and perspectives (2nd ed.). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.ISBN978-0849320019.OCLC46240352.
^Khudoley, K. M.; Meyerhoff, A. A. (1971), "Paleogeography and Geological History of Greater Antilles",Geological Society of America Memoirs, Geological Society of America, pp. 1–192,doi:10.1130/mem129-p1,ISBN978-0813711294
^abMann, Paul; Draper, Grenville; Lewis, John F. (1991), "An overview of the geologic and tectonic development of Hispaniola",Geological Society of America Special Papers, Geological Society of America, pp. 1–28,doi:10.1130/spe262-p1,ISBN978-0813722627
^Santiago-Valentin, Eugenio; Olmstead, Richard G. (2004). "Historical Biogeography of Caribbean Plants: Introduction to Current Knowledge and Possibilities from a Phylogenetic Perspective".Taxon.53 (2):299–319.doi:10.2307/4135610.ISSN0040-0262.JSTOR4135610.
Wikimedia Commons has media related toWest Indies.
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)
†Physiographically, thesecontinental islands are not part of the volcanic Windward Islands arc, although sometimes grouped with them culturally and politically.
#Bermuda is an isolatedNorth Atlanticoceanic island, physiographically not part of the Lucayan Archipelago, Antilles, Caribbean Sea nor North American continental nor South American continental islands. It is grouped with theNorthern American region, but occasionally also with the Caribbean region culturally.
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