Introduction

• Author: Anthony J. Payne
• Profession: Professor of Politics, University of Sheffield, UK. He is the author of several books on Caribbean politics and international relations
• Pages: 13-37

Introduction | xiii

Relations between the territories of the Commonwealth Caribbean

are, and always have been, governed by the underlying paradox of the

region’s geography. One must never forget that the West Indies are a

chain of islands. They stretch from Jamaica on the western tip of the

northern Antillean range, through the Leeward and Windward Islands,

to Barbados and Trinidad at the south-eastern point of the archipelago,

and embrace at either end the two mainland territories of Belize (formerly

British Honduras) and Guyana (formerly British Guiana). The distances

involved are considerable — Jamaica is fully a thousand miles from the

Eastern Caribbean and Belize some seven hundred miles west of Jamaica.

Undeniably, too, water separates more effectively than land. As one writer

on the Caribbean, a man with a professional background as a geographer,

has testified, ‘Polynesians and Melanesians, more at home with the ocean,

make it a highway instead of a barrier, but the Caribbean Sea more

often constrains and attenuates the social network’.1 And yet the facts

of geography do impose some sort of unity. Separated by sea though

they may be, the territories of the West Indies clearly constitute a region

in the geographic sense. They form an obvious group on the map and

are broadly contiguous in location, the Leewards and Windwards, in

fact, being close enough for them to be in sight of their nearest

neighbours. In other words, the West Indian frame of reference is, at

one and the same time, the island and the region. Historically, this

dualism has been internalised within the minds of those native to or

concerned with the area, and has engendered persistent doubt as to

whether the island or the region is the appropriate unit for political and

INTRODUCTION

The Paradox of Regional

History in the Caribbean

xiv | The Political History of CARICOM

economic action. As a result, the history of intra-regional relations in

the Commonwealth Caribbean has come to acquire a schizophrenic

character, exhibiting simultaneously the stamp of integration and

fragmentation. We need to begin by looking back over that history.

Early Administrative Links2

The idea of forging some sort of union between the territories of the

West Indies dates back to the earliest days of British rule. In 1625 Thomas

Warner, the man responsible for planting the first British settlement in

the region, was appointed the royal lieutenant of St. Kitts, Nevis, Barbados

and Montserrat, whilst two years later the authority of the Earl of Carlisle

was extended to cover all the ‘Caribee Islands’. However, as British

possessions in the West Indies grew in number, their joint administration

became increasingly impracticable. In 1671 the Leeward Islands were

given their own Governor, Sir William Stapleton, and they henceforth

acquired a history of their own. Stapleton soon took it upon himself to

gather for joint consultation representatives of the various island executive

councils and legislative assemblies. This modest initiative gradually evolved

into a sort of informal federal council and was officially ratified in 1765,

only to fade quickly into inactivity thereafter. Nevertheless, the unity of

the Leewards was preserved until 1816, when they were divided into two

separate governorships. The estrangement was only temporary, and in

1833 all the Leeward Islands, together with Dominica, were again placed

under one governor. He was their sole link until in 1869 the Colonial

Office urged the then incumbent, Sir Benjamin Pine, to form these islands

into one colony, with a single court, treasury and police corps. After

eighteen months of difficult negotiations he was only able to persuade

them to agree to a weakened form of federal union, which came into

being with the Leeward Islands Act of 1871 and, in fact, lasted until

1957. It was not, however, a happy arrangement. The territories only

acceded to it reluctantly and protested throughout its existence against

the additional financial burdens it imposed upon them. The report of

one outside observer, James Sanderson, in 1877 confirmed the complaints

and concluded that ‘the people of these islands have been most dreadfully