[8] Since the mid-20th century, several political and economic unions were formed involving Commonwealth Caribbean states.

While its membership primarily made up of associations from Commonwealth Caribbean, Cricket West Indies also includes representatives from two non-Commonwealth territories, Sint Maarten of the Dutch Caribbean and the United States Virgin Islands.

The Caribbean Free Trade Association (CARIFTA) was established on 15 December 1965, with Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago as its founding members.

The organisation aimed to integrate the economies of the newly formed sovereign states of the British West Indies by providing an agreement for free trade and encouraging "balanced development" in the region.

English was its sole official language until 1995, following the addition of Dutch-speaking Suriname.

These communities, which began forming in the seventeenth century, include areas of Nicaragua and Honduras that made up the Miskito Kingdom (which was under British protection after 1740), the Garifuna community (which was deported to the coast in 1797 and took up English as its language), the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina (Colombia), and the many and numerous Anglophone Caribbean people who were brought to Central America by the canal companies (the French and American Panama Canal efforts), railroad companies, and particularly the fruit companies, such as United Fruit after the 1870s and particularly in the first decades of the twentieth century.