If you've ever looked at a map of the Caribbean, you might have noticed that the tiny little islands in the lesser antilies

consist of a whole bunch of tiny independent countries. All of those countries became independent

around the same time and got their independence from the same country, Great

Britain. Given their common history and location, why are they a bunch of separate

tiny countries rather than one larger one? Learn more about the West Indies

and their modern history on this episode of

everything everywhere daily. The Caribbean can be a rather confusing part of the world just because there are so many islands in such a small area

So before I get into the history I should do a brief overview of the geography

The Caribbean can roughly be divided into three regions.

The Bahamas, the greater antilies, and the lesser antilies.

The Bahamas consists of the nation of the Bahamas and the Turks and Kekos Islands.

Technically speaking, they aren't actually in the Caribbean,

but they're often lumped with the Caribbean because they're so close.

This is a whole other episode that I'll be doing in the future.

The Greater Antilles is basically all of the large islands

which are located further to the west. This includes Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic,

Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands. The lesser Antilles is basically everything else. It

starts with the U.S. Virgin Islands and then arks south down to Trinidad and

Tobago, including the ABC Islands of Aruba, Bonnair, and Curacao.

The term West Indies is basically a misnomer.

Columbus was searching for what was known as the Indies, which was South and Southeast Asia.

When it became clear that he hadn't reached Asia, this region became known as the West Indies,

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