British West Indies

(proper noun)

A former name for the British colonies in around the Caribbean.

Related Terms

Examples of British West Indies in the following topics:

  • Navigation Acts

    • Sugar from the British West Indies was priced much higher than that of its competitors.
    • As a result colonists traded for lower-priced goods when they could, leaving the British West Indies traders short of customers.
    • In the first part of the 18th Century, the British West Indies were Great Britain's most important trading partner; Parliament was attentive to their requests.
    • The British West Indies, on the other hand, now had undivided access to colonial exports.
    • The British West Indies had been the primary colonial source for hard currency, or specie, and as the reserves of currency were depleted by taxation the soundness of colonial currency was threatened.

  • The Spreading Conflict

    • Many American colonists saw the Coercive Acts as a violation of the British Constitution and a threat to the liberties of all of British America, not just Massachusetts.
    • The articles of the Continental Association imposed an immediate ban on British tea and a ban on importing or consuming any goods (including the slave trade) from Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies to take effect on December 1, 1774.
    • It also threatened an export ban on any products from the American colonies to Britain, Ireland, or the West Indies, to be enacted only if the complained-of acts were not repealed by September 10, 1775.
    • The Articles stated that the export ban was being suspended until this date because of the "earnest desire we have not to injure our fellow-subjects in Great-Britain, Ireland, or the West-Indies. "
    • Parliament responded by passing the New England Restraining Act, which prohibited the northeastern colonies from trading with anyone but Britain and the British West Indies, and barred colonial ships from the North Atlantic fisheries.

  • The First Continental Congress

    • It was called in response to the passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament.
    • The articles imposed an immediate ban on British tea and a ban on importing or consuming any goods (including the slave trade) from Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies to take effect on December 1, 1774.
    • It also threatened an export ban on any products from the American colonies to Britain, Ireland, or the West Indies, to be enacted only if the complained-of acts were not repealed by September 10, 1775.
    • The Articles stated that the export ban was being suspended until this date because of the "earnest desire we have not to injure our fellow-subjects in Great-Britain, Ireland, or the West-Indies."
    • Trade with Great Britain fell sharply, and Parliament responded by passing the New England Restraining Act, which prohibited the northeastern colonies from trading with anyone but Britain and the British West Indies and barred colonial ships from the North Atlantic fisheries.

  • Conclusion: Patterns of British Settlement in the Colonies

    • The 18th century witnessed the birth of Great Britain (after the union of England and Scotland in 1707) and the expansion of the British Empire.
    • By the mid-1700s, Great Britain had developed into a commercial and military powerhouse; its economic sway ranged from India, where the British East India Company had gained control over both trade and territory, to the West African coast, where British slave traders predominated, and to the British West Indies, whose lucrative sugar plantations, especially in Barbados and Jamaica, provided windfall profits for British planters.
    • Slavery formed a cornerstone of the British Empire in the 18th century.
    • Isaac Royall and his family, seen here in a 1741 portrait by Robert Feke, moved to Medford, Massachusetts, from the West Indian island of Antigua, bringing their slaves with them.
    • Successful and well-to-do, they display fashions, hairstyles, and furnishings that all speak to their identity as proud and loyal British subjects.

  • The Sugar and Stamp Acts

    • The earlier Molasses Act of 1733 was passed by Parliament largely at the insistence of large plantation owners in the British West Indies.
    • Molasses was used in New England for making rum, and the molasses trade had been growing between New England, the Middle colonies, and the French, Dutch, and Spanish West Indian possessions.
    • Sugar from the British West Indies was priced much higher than its competitors, and an increasing number of colonial merchants turned to Britain's imperial rivals for the molasses they needed.
    • In the first part of the 18th century, the British West Indies were Great Britain's most important trading partner, so Parliament was attentive to their requests.
    • The Stamp Act, passed in 1765, was a direct tax imposed by the British Parliament on the colonies of British America.

  • Enforcing the Navigation Acts

    • These Acts formed the basis for British overseas trade for nearly 200 years.
    • Even the trade with English colonies was dominated by Dutch merchants, who crowded out English direct trade with a sudden influx of commodities from the Levant, the Mediterranean, the Spanish and Portuguese empires, and the West Indies, carried in Dutch ships and ultimately increasing Dutch profit.
    • For the British government and its traders, the most direct solution was to seal off the British Scottish markets to these unwanted imports.
    • In some instances, British colonists and foreign merchants subverted the Act; for example in the West Indies, the Dutch kept up a flourishing "smuggling" trade due to the preference of English planters for Dutch goods and the better deal the Dutch offered in the sugar trade.
    • Later laws such as the Molasses Act of 1733 (the first of the Sugar Acts) levied heavy duties on the trade of sugar from the French West Indies to the American colonies, forcing the colonists to buy the more expensive sugar from the British West Indies instead, and only added fuel to the growing fire.

  • Jay's Treaty

    • The Citizen Genêt Affair spurred Great Britain to instruct its naval commanders in the West Indies to seize all ships trading with the French.
    • John Jay was sent to Britain—with instructions from Hamilton—to secure compensation for captured American ships; to ensure the British leave the northwest outposts they still occupied (despite the terms of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which recognized this as American territory); and to gain an agreement for American trade in the West Indies.
    • The British were continually impressing American merchant sailors into British service, thereby violating the American flag flying on American ships in the Atlantic.
    • Merchants in both America and in the Caribbean wanted the British West Indies to be reopened to American trade.
    • Finally, the United States was granted limited rights to trade with British possessions in India and the West Indies in exchange for some limits on the American export of cotton.

  • Harassment by Britain

    • One major cause of conflict that remained unresolved by Jay's Treaty in 1794 was the British practice of impressment, whereby American sailors were taken at sea and forced to fight on British warships.
    • Beginning in 1664, the Royal British Navy used this practice in wartime, and during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, impressment allowed the British to crew their warships.
    • While non-British subjects were never impressed, Britain did not recognize naturalized American citizenship and therefore treated anyone born a British subject as British.
    • Although this was illegal, Thomas Jefferson ignored the actions to remain on good terms with Britain as he was negotiating to obtain East and West Florida.
    • This changed in 1805, however, when the British began seizing American merchantmen trading with the West Indies, claiming the ships and their cargoes as a prize, and enforcing impressment on the vessels' crews.

  • Georgia and South Carolina

    • In 1778, the British turned their attention to the South, hoping to draw upon a strong Southern Loyalist base.
    • As the British campaign in the South progressed, this assumption was shown to be incorrect.
    • African Americans ended up in Canada, Britain, the West Indies, and Europe.
    • In 1792, 1,200 black Loyalists who had settled in Nova Scotia left for Sierra Leone, a colony on the west coast of Africa established by Britain specifically for former slaves.
    • Though unsuccessful, the actions of Greene and allied militia commanders led the weakened British forces to abandon Ninety Six and Camden, effectively reducing the British presence in South Carolina to the port of Charleston.

  • Spain in the Revolutionary War

    • When Spain officially entered the war in 1779, her main goals were the recovery of Gibraltar and Minorca from the British.
    • Though the Treaty of Aranjuez committed France to continue engagements with the British until Spain had gained Gibraltar, Spain agreed to accept Minorca and West Florida in lieu of Gibraltar.
    • Spain provided military assistance to the Patriots on several fronts, in European waters, the West Indies, the American Midwest, and at the Siege of Yorktown.
    • In 1781, the Spanish achieved a decisive victory against the British at the Battle of Pensacola, giving the Spanish control of West Florida.
    • Minorca surrendered the following year, and was restored to Spain after the war, nearly eighty years after it was first captured by the British.