The Caribbean

The term Caribbean is given to the large expanse of sea between the south of the United States and the north of South America. It contains many islands which fall into two broad groups, on the one hand the Greater Antilles which include Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (consisting of Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Puerto Rico and on the other hand the Lesser Antilles which is a long band of islands stretching in an arc on the east coast of the Caribbean from the British Virgin Islands in the north to Trinidad and Tobago in the south. In addition one should mention the Bahamas, a group of several small islands of the south-east coast of Florida, Turks and Caicos to the south of these (north of Hispaniola) and the Cayman Islands to the south of Cuba.

The anglophone settlement of the Caribbean begin in 1627 on Barbados. The first settlers included indentured servants and political exiles from Ireland. When Barbados quickly became overcrowded (with the advent of African slaves in the second half of the 17th century) people left and settled in other parts of the Caribbean including the northern coast of South America, in what is now called Suriname (former Dutch Guyana) and the southern coast of the later United States, along the coast of what is now South Carolina. Today only one of the Greater Antilles is English-speaking, namely Jamaica, but there is a considerable English presence on many of the smaller islands. On the Caribbean coast of Central America there are still some pockets of English speakers, e.g. on the Miskito Coast of Nicaragua and in Belize (former British Honduras).