The Caribbean Community

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) comprises twelve Commonwealth Caribbean countries: Antigua, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, St Lucia, St Vincent and Trinidad and Tobago. The Bahamas, though not a member of the community, participates in many of its activities and other Caribbean countries such as Surinam, Cuba, and Haiti participate on an ad hoc basis in specific areas. The Treaty of Chaguaramas establishing CARICOM in 1973 is the most recent stage of a long history of efforts to promote political unity, economic integration and other forms of co-operation between the member countries. Two broad categories of efforts have been made in the past. The first, which was aimed primarily at political unity and pursued by the British government since the early period of settlement in the seventeenth century, culminated in the West Indies Federation in 1958. The Federation lasted only four years and collapsed in 1962 (Mordecai, 1968; Wallace, 1977). One of the main purposes of the Federation was the creation of an infrastructure which was thought at the time to be the essential prerequisite of independence as it was felt that none of the islands individually had the capability of assuming the responsibilities of independence unilaterally (Proctor, 1956).