The British West Indies consist of two mainland colonies and a number of islands stretching in a great arc from British Honduras in Central America to British Guiana on the mainland of South America—a total distance following the island chain of nearly 3,000 miles. They vary greatly in size. The mainland colonies are much the largest: British Honduras is about 8,598 square miles in extent and British Guiana 83,000 square miles (about the size of Kansas, and larger than Great Britain). Of the British islands, Jamaica, with 4,411 square miles is larger than all the rest put together. Trinidad is next in size with an area of 1,856 square miles. Some of the others are tiny. St Kitts is only 68 square miles in extent and Barbados, 166 square miles. Grenada is 133, St Vincent 150, St Lucia 233 and Dominica, the largest of the Windwards, 205 square miles. — Morley Ayearst, p. 11
General
- Excerpt from Eneas Dallas's review of Anthony Trollope's The West Indies and the Spanish Main (1859)
Jamaica
- Jamaica and the British Caribbean. An Introduction
- The Governor Eyre Affair (sitemap)
- “The Negro Insurrection in Jamaica” (Illustrated London News (15 November 1865)
- The Jamaica Commissioners’s report on the Jamaica insurrection condemning the conduct of Governor Eyre and his subordinates (Illustrated London News, 23 June 1866):
- A letter from the past — Slavery and Manumission in 1812
- Port Royal, Jamaica
Architecture
- Georgian Jamaica and its public buildings
- The Anglican churches of eighteenth-century Jamaica
- The Great Houses of Jamaica
- In search of the Ferry Inn, Jamaica
Sculpture
- The Statue of Admiral Lord Rodney in Spanish Town, Jamaica
- John Bacon the elder’s Jamaica commissions
- Sir Charles Metcalfe, Governor of Jamaica (E. H. Baily)
London and the West Indies
Related Material
Bibliography
Ayearst, Morley. The British West Indies: The Search for Self-Government. London: Allen & Unwin, 1960.
Carley, Mary Manning. Jamaica. The old and the new. London: Allen and Unwin, 1963.
Cundall, Frank. Historic Jamaica. London: Institute of Jamaica, 1915.
Green, Patricia. The evolution of Jamaican architecture. 1494-1838. University of Pennsylvania, 1988.
Wright, Philip. Lady Nugent’s Journal. Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 1966.
Last modified 29 January 2016