By Chris Morvan
It’s all Christopher Columbus’s fault. He was trying to get from Spain to south Asia, but ended up in the Caribbean. Easy mistake to make. Just fail to turn left when you come out of the Mediterranean and you are heading across the Atlantic ocean, bound for the wrong continent.
My recent introduction to this island threw up the complexity of having two “sides” (actually a top and a bottom part) with a plethora of nationalities and languages and two versions of the name.
In Europe, certainly outside France and the Netherlands, St Martin and Sint Maarten are little-known places. It’s Europe’s loss, as those of us fortunate enough to be here know, but it’s a fact.
The UK, along with Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and anywhere else that understands cricket, thinks there is this group of islands called the West Indies. Because that’s what the Caribbean cricket team is called.
Columbus would have been better off going overland, as it happens, but he wasn’t to know that, so he did his best and, when he found land and didn’t know where the hell he was, he assumed he wasn’t far away from his desired destination. If he was looking for clues from the local population, he may have noticed something Asian about the eyes of the Caribs and Arawaks.
“Anyway, we were looking for the Indies [i.e. something to do with India] and we’ve found a place with vaguely Asian-looking people so let’s call it the West Indies. Strayed a bit there, Mr Navigator. Pull your socks up – but we can’t be far away.”
Some 400 years later, the English, having muscled in on the ‘New World’ and given the locals everything from organized sport and commerce to fancy foreign diseases, started playing cricket against the West Indies, and that was the British perception up to the late 20th century. Cricket is the only sport in which the Caribbean nations compete as a group and under the name West indies. Usain Bolt comes not from a generalized WI but the highly specific Jamaica.
It should be understood that England is part of Great Britain – and if you add Northern Ireland, it’s the United Kingdom – and therefore British can mean English, although it can equally indicate Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people.
This geography business is so complicated. No wonder I was so bad at it at school.
In the 1960s air travel suddenly made it possible for the British to visit the tropics on holiday, rather than shivering on their own beaches.
Americans have a different story to tell, but all I really know about that is that they call the Caribbean ‘the islands’ in a rather proprietorial way.
For us Brits, we couldn’t get enough of the sun, sea and sand. Not that we don’t have our own, but as I said, the thermostat is stuck on a low temperature for most of the year.
What we knew from cricket was that in the “West Indies” there was Barbados, there was Trinidad, there was Jamaica and there was Guyana. Yes, Guyana. Well known (to cricket fans) players such as Basil Butcher, Lance Gibbs and Rohan Kanhai were all part of the West Indies team that toured England in the mid 60s, and then came Clive Lloyd. All Guyanese. All playing for the Windies. And therefore Guyana must be an island in the Caribbean, right?
Wrong. It’s a country in South America. Pardon one’s ignorance. And anyway, Guyana, along with Suriname, doesn’t consider itself part of South America as much as of the Caribbean.
So the British perception was that the West Indies was Barbados, Trinidad, Guyana and Jamaica.
Then we heard of Antigua, and people started getting married on the beach in St Lucia. And there was Grenada, the spice island. The Caribbean map was taking shape.
But that’s where it stopped for most people. We knew about the Bahamas, but we didn’t necessarily know where they were. Tobago? Never heard of it. Curacao? Somewhere in China.
Aruba and Bonaire? Figments of your imagination, old son (although the Dutch know where they are, because they made the most impact there in colonial times). Antilles, Windward islands, Leeward islands? You’re just trying to confuse me.
To further complicate the issue there is a popular TV series in the UK and France called Death in Paradise. It’s filmed in Guadeloupe and set on the imaginary island of Sainte Marie, where a British detective is installed as the Chief of Police. Of course he’s like a fish out of water. And the island is indeed a paradise, with beautiful beaches and sexy young women, but there are no proper roads, so no traffic, and no crime apart from somebody getting murdered once a week for the sake of the plot.
So the ignorance about the Caribbean continues. Guadeloupe? No, that’s a kind of melon. Cuba? Off the coast of Russia. St Kitts and Nevis? That’s a home for stray animals in south London.
