Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0339/03398.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 6KB | 109 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03398}
$Pretitle{233L}
$Title{St. Kitts and Nevis
Chapter 1.    General Overview of the Leeward Islands}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Franklin W. Knight}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{islands
british
leewards
federation
st
leeward
political
kitts

}
$Date{1987}
$Log{Harvesting Sugarcane*0339801.scf
}
Country:     St. Kitts and Nevis
Book:        Caribbean Commonwealth, An Area Study: St. Kitts and Nevis
Author:      Franklin W. Knight
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 1.    General Overview of the Leeward Islands

[See Harvesting Sugarcane: Harvesting Sugarcane]

     Like the rest of the insular Caribbean, the Leeward islands were
discovered and named by the Spanish, only to have their control contested by
the British and French. The term leeward islands is derived from the course
taken by most of the sailing ships that voyaged from Britain to the Caribbean.
Impelled by the trade winds, these vessels normally encountered Barbados, the
island most to windward, as their first port of call. After progressing
through the islands most to windward, which came to be known as the Windwards,
these ships rounded off their voyages with the islands most to
leeward--Montserrat, Antigua, Barbuda, St. Christopher (hereafter, St. Kitts),
Nevis, Anguilla, and the Virgin Islands, among others.

      Historically, the Leewards and Windwards have followed somewhat
divergent paths despite their common colonial bond. The Leewards were settled
earlier and were not, with the possible exception of St. Kitts, as rigorously
disputed over as were the Windwards. Consequently, the period of uninterrupted
British rule was longer in the Leewards. One legacy of this is the absence of
French-influenced creole languages among the inhabitants of the Leewards.
Despite colloquial forms of expression, English is the common tongue. In
regard to religion, Roman Catholicism did not take root in the Leewards as it
did in the Windwards. A number of Protestant denominations, predominantly the
Anglican, Methodist, and Moravian churches, account for most of the Leewards
faithful.

    As a political entity, the Leewards experienced two extended periods of
federation during the colonial period. The first of these, the Leeward
Caribbee Islands Government, was established in 1671 and united the islands
under the direction of a British governor. For a brief period in the early
nineteenth century (1806-32), this grouping was divided into two separate
governments. In 1871 Dominica, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, St.
Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, and Antigua (with Barbuda and Redonda) became the
Leeward Islands Federation. Except for Dominica, which withdrew in 1940, these
islands remained joined until the British dissolved the federation in 1956.
Following a brief period in which they were administered as separate colonies,
the former members of the Leeward Islands Federation were absorbed into the
West Indies Federation in 1958 (see The West Indies Federation, 1958-62, ch.
1). The islands assumed associated statehood (see Glossary) in 1967, five
years after the dissolution of the West Indies Federation. By the end of 1983,
all but the dependencies (Anguilla, Montserrat, and the British Virgin
Islands) had acquired full independence.

     One phenomenon that binds the two island groupings together in a
political and perhaps sociological and even psychological sense is the
"small-island complex." Caribbean scholar Gordon K. Lewis has blamed this
mind-set, which is a general feeling of inferiority suffered by the residents
of small islands in relation to the residents of larger islands such as
Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, for the failure of the West Indies Federation
and other even less successful efforts at unification. Others have noted the
"push and pull" effect on migration from the smaller islands to the larger
islands, although these patterns are probably best examined and explained from
an economic rather than a sociological- psychological point of view.

    The Leewards generally have shared a similar pattern of economic
development. The plantation system, characterized by production of one or
possibly two major export products on land often held by absentee owners, has
been another legacy of the enduring but largely static and unresponsive
British control of the islands. What the system produced for Britain was
sugar. Its by-products--labor strife, migration, landlessness, and
poverty--were bequeathed to the workers. Thus it was that labor unions became
the first vehicles for mass-based political expression in the islands. The
political parties that grew out of unionism came to dominate government in the
Leewards, especially after the granting of universal adult suffrage in 1951.
Although the power of the labor-based parties was eventually diminished by
factionalism and the rise of middle-class opposition groups (especially in St.
Kitts and Nevis), their political influence has endured.

    One notable political aspect of the Leewards is the high incidence of
multi-island states--Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, and the
British Virgin Islands. Such associations were encouraged by the British, who
thought to enhance the economic and political viability of these small states
by broadening their productive and electoral bases. The British did not
sufficiently account for the small-island complex, however, and the seemingly
inherent resentment it generated among the residents of the smaller islands.
Thus, the grouping of unequal partners promoted unrest more than unity,
particularly in the case of Anguilla. Eventually, a more positive approach to
the question of multi-island federation, based on the concept of enhanced and
assured autonomy for the smaller island, was achieved in Antigua and Barbuda
and St. Kitts and Nevis.