The Archbishop of the West Indies is the Anglican primate of the Province of the West Indies, part of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
The West Indies became a self-governing province of the Church of England in 1883, when William Piercy Austin (who had been Bishop of Guyana since 1842) was appointed the first Primate.
The title of Archbishop is invariably held concurrently with that of bishop of one of the eight dioceses of the province, and it is common for the most senior bishop in the province to be elected as archbishop.
^These three form the SSS islands that with the ABC islands comprise the Dutch Caribbean, of which *the BES islands are not direct Kingdom constituents but subsumed with the country of the Netherlands.
†Physiographically, these continental islands are not part of the volcanic Windward Islands arc, although sometimes grouped with them culturally and politically.