Talks on the independence of the British West Spanish place-names and family-names remind Indies seem to have been in the news for a very us that the Latin influence still lingers. The long time. Broad principles of federation were English took Jamaica from the Spaniards in 1655, laid down at the Closer Union Conference at but Trinidad was not finally captured until 1797.

Montego Bay in 1947, and since 1953 the many One of the terms of surrender guaranteed free­ problems have been under constant discussion. dom of worship, and the number of Roman At Lancaster House this June some seventy Catholics in Trinidad today bears witness that delegates reached a compromise on many of the the British honoured the treaty. Throughout the difficulties and the Colonial Office has announced British West Indies the language is English, but that the West Indian Federation will achieve in the Windward Isles the local patois is based independence at the end of May 1962 on Old French and many laws in St Lucia are workable union of ten territories comprising. The main racial streams, however, came during more than twenty islands? The Federation of the great days of sugar when thousands of slaves Australia hung fire for over fifty years before were shipped from Africa to work on the plan­the six quarrelling States became united.

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After the emancipation in 1834, the mittedly Australia is vast compared with the slaves left the estates to scrape together a bare Caribbean islands, but when Queen Victoria livelihood on tiny patches of unwanted land or in signed the proclamation in 1900 its population the towns. So the planters recruited indentured was under two million labour from India and later from Portugal and
Today there are just over three million visitors per year of apartments to rent in Manchester. When Columbus discovered the islands in stock; though they are relatively few elsewhere, 1492 the gentle Arawaks were in the process of in Trinidad they form about a third of the popu­being worsted by the more aggressive Caribs, lation. Scattered throughout the islands are who, it is believed, made their way up the islands several thousand Portuguese and Chinese; a from the South American mainland. During the few Syrian families; and, of course, the progeny next three centuries four empires, Spanish, of the white `plantocracy’ of English, Scottish, French, Dutch and English, fought over the French and Spanish descent.

West Indies for gold, for trade, for power. An West Indians are less sensitive about colour incident of the white man’s struggle, with the prejudice than almost any other people. There cross in one hand and the sword in the other, is a well-loved Trinidad calypso which says, was the virtual extermination of the indigenes. `Small island boy go back where you belong’, but Now a tiny pocket of Caribs live in apartments for rent in New York between large islands and smaller ones, a Manhattan not to be con­ can be equated to a Londoner’s attitude to fused with the State of New York; their `provincials’, and local jokes about colour hold debilitated stock has persisted only through little more rancour than those between Scots and intermarriage, and nowadays one is hard put to Sassenachs.