The West Indies is a North American subregion, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island countries and 19 dependencies in three archipelagos: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Lucayan Archipelago, including the English-speaking countries and territories in the wider region, such as Guyana and Belize.

The term is often interchangeable with "Caribbean", although the latter may also include coastal regions of Central and South American mainland nations, including Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, French Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname, as well as the Atlantic island nation of Bermuda, all of which are geographically distinct from the three main island groups, but culturally related.

The English term Indie is derived from the Classical Latin India, a reference to the territories in South Asia adjacent and east to the Indus River.

[8] In 1492, Christopher Columbus and his Spanish fleet left Spain seeking a western sea passage to the Eastern world, hoping to profit from the lucrative spice trade emanating from Hindustan, Indochina, and Insulindia, the regions currently found within the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia, which were first simply referred to by Spanish and Portuguese explorers as the Indias (Indies).

In the late 16th century, French, English and Dutch merchants and privateers began operations in the Caribbean Sea, attacking Spanish and Portuguese shipping and coastal areas.

In the Lesser Antilles, they managed to establish a foothold following the colonisation of Saint Kitts in 1624 and Barbados in 1626, and when the Sugar Revolution took off in the mid-17th century, they brought in thousands of enslaved Africans to work the fields and mills as labourers.

These enslaved Africans wrought a demographic revolution, replacing or joining with either the indigenous Caribs or the European settlers who were there as indentured servants.

In the Miskito Kingdom, the rise to power of the Miskito-Zambos, who originated in the survivors of a rebellion aboard a slave ship in the 1640s and the introduction of enslaved Africans by British settlers within the Miskito area and in Belize, also transformed this area into one with a high percentage of persons of African descent as was found in most of the rest of the Caribbean.

[18] The Greater Antilles originated near the Isthmian region of present-day Central America in the Late Cretaceous (commonly referred to as the Proto-Antilles), then drifted eastward arriving in their current location when colliding with the Bahama Platform of the North American Plate ca.

[19] This collision caused subduction and volcanism in the Proto-Antillean area and likely resulted in continental uplift of the Bahama Platform and changes in sea level.

[20] The Greater Antilles have continuously been exposed since the start of the Paleocene or at least since the Middle Eocene (66-40 million years ago), but which areas were above sea level throughout the history of the islands remains unresolved.

[23] The Blue Mountains of Jamaica are a granite outcrop rising over 2,000 meters (6000'), while the rest of the island to the west consists mainly of karst limestone.

[16] The emergent islands of the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos likely formed from accumulated deposits of wind-blown sediments during Pleistocene glacial periods of lower sea level.