West Indies

The term “West Indies” refers to the region of the Caribbean Sea. The islands of the West Indies exerted an important influence on North Americans in the colonial, revolutionary, and early republican eras. The West Indies and North America were tied through trade, shared the institution of slavery, and were politically and diplomatically interconnected.

During the colonial period, from the British perspective, the West Indies colonies of Jamaica and Barbados were their most important colonies in the Americas. Great profits could be earned from plantations growing sugar on these islands. The North American colonists fit into this equation as suppliers of food and carriers of slaves from Africa. Not content with this role for the British colonies, colonial North Americans also engaged in illicit trade with the French, Dutch, and Spanish of the region. It was in response to this trade that Great Britain began to tighten imperial regulations in the 1760s and passed the Sugar Act (1764). After the Revolutionary War (1775-83), much of the West Indies trade was closed to the United States. The Anglo-French Wars after 1793 helped to reinvigorate West Indies trade, especially with the French colonies. The revolutions in the Spanish colonies following the Anglo-French Wars also increased trade with the region, although contact with the British colonies remained restricted.

Throughout this period, slavery tied North America and the West Indies together. Most colonies in the Caribbean had a more extensively developed plantation economy than in what became the mainland colonies. But there were many similarities between slavery in the two areas, especially in coastal South Carolina and tidewater Virginia, both densely populated with slaves. Elsewhere, merchant connections, slave traders, and even the slaves themselves (many of whom had Caribbean roots) had direct personal knowledge of the West Indies slave system. During the 1790s and early 1800s the great slave revolt in the French colony of Saint Domingue (Haiti), had a searing impact on North American slaveholders, suggesting to them their own fate if they did not fully control their chattel workers. In turn, the movement to free slaves in some parts of the United States had an influence on slaves throughout the West Indies.

The West Indies were often the centerpiece for contests over empire. During the French and Indian War (1754-63), the British were as much concerned with controlling the West Indies as North America. During the peace negotiation, France gave up Canada so that it could retain possessions in the Caribbean.

The West Indies were also an import locus of action during the Revolutionary War. Although the British colonists in the West Indies shared some of the same grievances as their North American cousins, they generally opposed the resistance that broke into revolution in 1775. Many plantation owners had strong connections to Great Britain, with several having seats in Parliament, and therefore opposed independence. Moreover, the island colonies were more dependant on Great Britain for protection from other nations and from the overwhelming majority of black slaves in their midst. Thus, although there were some revolutionary sympathizers in the islands, they generally became bastions for Loyalists. Moreover, during the war, the naval control of the region was vital to both the French and the British. Once France entered the war in 1778, the British focused as much on protecting their possessions in the West Indies as fighting the war in North America. It was the arrival of a French fleet from the West Indies that set up the victory at Yorktown (October 19,

1781). Moreover, the French disaster at the Battle of the Saintes (April 12, 1782)—a naval engagement fought in the straits between Dominica and Guadeloupe—helped to bring both Great Britain and France to the peace table to end the conflict.

During the 1790s and early 1800s the West Indies became the locus of much of the conflict over neutral

Press, 1987);

Rights, as British and French navies seized merchant ships from the United States. The profitable carrying trade was mainly between French and British colonies in the West Indies and Europe. The QuASl-WAR (1798-1800) was largely fought in the West Indies. French failure to regain control of Saint Domingue in 1803 convinced Napoleon Bonaparte to sell the Louisiana Purchase (1803).

See also eoreign aeeairs.

Further Reading: Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press); Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute (New York: Knopf, 1988).