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

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone, this is Gary, and I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to be taking a brief summer break this week. So I've lined up some episodes from the archives that statistically I know most of you haven't listened to. And if you have heard it, it'll be a good refresher. I'll be back again with new episodes on July 23rd. 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

Starting point is 00:00:37 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? ThruLine 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 Thuline 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,

Starting point is 00:01:37 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 the Cayman Islands. The lesser Antilles is basically everything else. It starts with the U.S. Virgin Islands and then arcs south down to Trinidad and Tobago,

Starting point is 00:02:12 including the ABC Islands of Aruba-Ban-Kurosau. 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.

Starting point is 00:02:45 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, Anguilla, Antigua, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, 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. empire wasn't long for this world, and it was just a matter of time before all the constituent

Starting point is 00:03:22 parts would become independent countries. For larger countries like India, independence practically made sense. They 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 3,000. 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

Starting point is 00:04:06 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.

Starting point is 00:04:52 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.

Starting point is 00:05:31 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.

Starting point is 00:06:14 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.

Starting point is 00:06:53 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.

Starting point is 00:07:33 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 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.

Starting point is 00:08:17 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 and the Lester Antilles, and it's pegged to the U.S. dollar for stability.

Starting point is 00:09:15 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

Starting point is 00:09:49 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. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's

Starting point is 00:10:31 producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.

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

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