Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Why Isn't the West Indies a Single Country?

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

Subscribe to the podcast!  https://podfollow.com/everythingeverywhere/ If you have ever looked at a map of the Caribbean, you might have noticed that the tiny islands in the Lesser Antilles consist of a whole bunch of tiny, independent countries.  All of these countries became independent around the same time, got their independence from the same country: Great Britain. Given their common history and location, why are they a bunch of separate tiny countries rather than one larger one?  Learn more about the West Indies and their modern history, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. -------------------------------- Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/EEDailyPodcast/ Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you've ever looked at a map of the Caribbean, you might have noticed that the tiny little islands in the lesser Antilles consist of a whole bunch of tiny independent countries. All of those countries became independent around the same time and got their independence from the same country, Great Britain. Given their common history and location, why are they a bunch of separate tiny countries rather than one larger one? Learn more about the West Indies and their modern history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thurline podcast from NPR. The Caribbean can be a rather confusing part of the world just because there are so many islands in such a small area. So before I get into the history, I should do a brief overview of the geography. The Caribbean can roughly be divided into three regions.

The Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the Lesser Antilles. The Bahamas consists of the nation of the Bahamas and the Turks and Kekos Islands. Technically speaking, they aren't actually in the Caribbean, but they're often lumped with the Caribbean because they're so close. This is a whole other episode that I'll be doing in the future. The Greater Antilles is basically all of the large islands which are located further to the west. This includes Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and, and, and and the Cayman Islands. The lesser Antilles is basically everything else. It starts with

the U.S. Virgin Islands and then arc south down to Trinidad and Tobago, including the ABC Islands of Aruba, Bonner, and Curacao. The term West Indies is basically a misnomer. Columbus was searching for what was known as the Indies, which was South and Southeast Asia. When it became clear that he hadn't reached Asia, this region became known as the West Indies, with the region in Asia being known as the East Indies. The West Indies geographically referred to pretty much everything in the Caribbean. However, for the purposes of this episode, the West Indies is only going to refer to the islands which were British colonies after World War II. These are all English-speaking islands with similar cultures and histories. Just to be complete, the list of islands were Jamaica, the Cayman Islands,

the British Virgin Islands, and Gwila, Antigua, Montserrat, St. Kittsenevis, Dominica, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Turks and Cagos. Basically, every English-speaking country in the region except for the Bahamas, Bermuda, and Guyana, which is actually in South America, but is often linked with the Caribbean. After World War II, the British Empire basically had a fire sale. The empire wasn't long for this world, and it was just a matter of time before all the constituent parts would become independent countries. For larger countries, like India, independence practically made sense.

had the size to join the ranks of other nations. The islands in the Caribbean, however, were not like India. They were a small in area, small in population, had few resources, and lacked strong economies. The British knew that independence was going to be inevitable, and so as part of the transition in 1958, they created the West Indian Federation. The Federation basically consisted of all of the islands I just mentioned. The explicit goal of creating the Federation was to create an entity that would become independent similar to the Federation of Canada. Here I should note something about these islands. They are indeed similar in language and culture. However, that doesn't mean that they're the same. In 2013, I took a trip where I traveled from Puerto

Rico down to Trinidad, and I visited all of the countries and territories along the way. To be sure, the islands are similar, but there are differences, subtle but important differences. similar to the differences between, say, the United States and Canada, Germany and Austria, or Sweden and Norway. There were more than just subtle cultural differences between the islands, however. The most populous island of Jamaica was over 1,200 miles of open water away from the second most populous island of Trinidad. The idea of the Federation of the West Indies wasn't a bad one, at least on paper. The concept of taking this many small islands and uniting them into a single country isn't a crazy one. but there were many problems that doomed this project from the start.

For starters, the idea of the Federation came entirely from the British. It was a totally top-down affair, and there was initially no input from the people on the islands. It doesn't mean that the idea was universally rejected everywhere, but nor was it the result of a groundswell of popular support. The other thing that quickly came into play was inter-island politics. One of the biggest sticking points was where the capital of the new country would be. The first idea was to put it on one of the smaller islands, which would be more neutral to the larger islands that would have dominated the federal government. One suggestion that was floated was to put the capital on the island of Grenada. When that idea was scrapped, the three candidates were the three most populous islands in the Federation, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados.

For the short duration of the Federation, Port of Spain, Trinidad, served as the de facto capital, even though it was never officially named as such because an agreement could never be reached as to where to put it. The Federation had a major problem in that each island was responsible for imposing its own tariffs and trade policies, even with other islands within the Federation. That meant that each island was basically their own independent economy, which sort of defeated the entire purpose of being a united country. Even when sovereign countries do usually band together, like in the European Union, it's to remove tariffs and trade barriers to allow commerce to flow more easily. There were also ethnic issues that came into play. Most of the islands in the Federation had a population that was overwhelmingly Afro-Caribbean. The exception to that was Trinidad and Tobago, which has a plurality of the population which is of Indian ancestry. There were no legislative protections for ethnic minorities in the Federation, which was the reason why Guyana refused to join, as they also have a plurality of people of Indian descent.

There was a single election that ever took place in the Federation of the West Indies. In 1958, the West Indian Federal Labor Party won a small majority. in the new parliament over the Democratic Labor Party. Both parties were organized and founded in Jamaica. The demise of the Short-lived Federation began in September of 1961, when a referendum was held in Jamaica. The question put to voters was simply, should Jamaica remain in the Federation of the West Indies? The no-votes won 54 to 46%.

The next year on August 6, 1962, Jamaica left the Federation and became an independent country. This was a devastating blow to the Federation. as Jamaica was the largest island in terms of population and had the largest economy. The biggest concerns of the Jamaicans were that they would have to financially support the smaller islands, that Jamaica's representation in the parliament was smaller than its share of the population, and that Kingston wasn't selected as the capital. With Jamaica out, after the referendum, the center of gravity of the Federation now shifted to Trinidad. The Trinidadians now faced the same problem that the Jamaicans did.

They would have to provide most of the revenue for the new country, yet they would wouldn't have had a majority of seats in the Parliament. In January 1962, the largest political party in Trinidad passed a resolution in support of independence, and that happened just a few weeks after Jamaica became independent. With Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago now out, efforts shifted once again to make Barbados the center of the federation. However, with the two largest states now gone, there was no real way for the Federation to be viable, especially if the biggest burden had to be carried by Barbados, which was still much smaller than Trinidad or Jamaica. With that, later in 1962, the British Parliament officially dissolved the Federation of the West Indies.

Over the next two decades, seven of the former states in the Federation became independent countries. Barbados, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Antigua and Barbuda. Several of the smallest islands are still British territories, and I outlined them in a previous episode on the subject. In the almost 60 years since the breakup of the Federation, the economic fortunes of every member state has improved considerably, mostly due to the rise of tourism in the region. Cooperation between the islands has also improved as well. The problem the Federation had with each state running its own trade policy has mostly been overcome with the creation of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States and the Caribbean community, or Karakom, which is sort of the Caribbean version of the European Union.

The Eastern Caribbean dollar is now used in many of the smaller islands in the Lester Antilles, and it's pegged to the U.S. dollar for stability. There is also an appellate court and a Supreme court, which is shared amongst many of the countries. I also have to mention the one institution which still functions under the West Indies name, the West Indies cricket team. This is a transnational team representing all of the West Indies and is the team that competes against other national teams like England, India, and South Africa. They've actually had a fair amount of success, having won the World Cup in 1975 and

1979 and the 2020 World Cup in 2012 and 2016. I actually remember eating at a small restaurant in Antigua once, and I saw posters of some cricket player that was all over the walls that I didn't recognize. I asked who it was, and they looked at me like I was from the moon. It turned out to have been Sir Viv Richards, arguably the greatest player in West Indies history. Since the failure of the Federation of the West Indies, strangely enough, most of the former member states have wound up creating economic and judicial institutions, which are not too far from what the Federation was trying to achieve. Instead of doing it as a single nation, however, they managed to achieve it as a group of sovereign, independent countries. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett.

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