The white colonists on the islands were also more closely connected with the mother country many of the elite returned to Britain for their education and even settled there as wealthy absentees.įrom the outset, the Revolutionary War involved the West Indies. In addition, they were economically dependent upon their monopoly of the sugar market in Britain. Their loyalty during the imperial crisis was based on their reliance upon the home government for defense owing to their greater vulnerability to slave revolts and foreign attack. It was only on the eve of the war that they made sympathetic gestures to the mainland cause, but this sudden change of tone was motivated primarily by their desire to prevent a war that was likely to have adverse economic consequences for the British West Indies. Unlike Bermuda, they did not send delegates to the Continental Congress. They continued to affirm their belief in parliamentary sovereignty. Nevertheless, they did not unite in even a limited campaign of opposition to Britain or engage in a pamphlet war with Britain. Their political systems, including elected assemblies, were similar to those of the mainland colonies, and their plantation systems shared much in common with the southern mainland colonies, especially South Carolina. Vincent and Dominica-did not ally themselves with the thirteen mainland colonies, even though they were tied closely to the rebel colonies by trade before the war. The six British colonies in the Caribbean-Jamaica Grenada, which included Tobago Barbados the Leeward Islands St. Furthermore, they were economically important as the principal market for the slave trade in the Americas and as the primary source of the sugar and rum consumed in Europe and America. This was because they were divided among the colonial powers of Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, all of whom were belligerents at some stage of the Revolutionary War. The West Indies were a major theater of the American Revolutionary War.
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