West Indies

A geographic region referring to the islands of the Caribbean (and sometimes surrounding coastal areas), historically significant as a colonial plantation economy and a site of racial hierarchies, anticolonial movements, and cultural exchange. The term is used in these claims to denote the Caribbean islands as a social and political context.

Claims that use this term

• Las Casas proposed bringing Africans to the West Indies to spare Indians
• The Italo-Ethiopian War triggered militant racial consciousness in the West Indies.
• Cricket in the West Indies mirrored the racial hierarchy of the wider society.
• The Italo-Ethiopian War inflamed racial antagonism across the West Indies
• West Indies wealth was self-generated from plantation profits, not imported capital
• British industrialists dropped the West Indies once free trade and India paid more