Bible Encyclopedias
British West Indies

Officers

Alen

Barbados. .. .. .

20

811

Bahamas

2

439

British Guiana .

14

686

British Honduras .

5

528

Jamaica. .. ..

30

Trinidad and Tobago

40

91,438

Grenada. .. .

4

441

St. Lucia. .. .. .

5

354

St. Vincent. .. .

..

305

The Leeward Is... .

4

225

397

15,204

The World War.-The British West Indies contributed gen.; erously in men, money and produce toward the prosecution of the World War. Many hundreds of West Indians came over to England independently to enlist, and a contingent comprising 15,601 officers and men was recruited voluntarily for active service. The numbers of men recruited in the various islands, British Guiana and British Honduras, were: The men were embodied in the British West Indies Regt., which served with distinction in France and Flanders, and also in Egypt and Palestine, where they participated in the victorious advance to `Amman. The total casualties were: Killed or died of wounds, 185; died of sickness, 1,071; wounded, 697. Private contingents were also sent over for enlistment by the Trinidad Merchants' and Planters' Contingent Committee and the Barbados Citizens' Contingent Committee for recruitment in the United Kingdom. In order to provide for the welfare of the West India and Bermuda military contingents, and of men coming over independently to serve in His Majesty's forces during the war, the West Indian Contingent Committee was formed in London at the instance of Mr. Bonar Law, the then Secretary of State for the Colonies, in 1915. The total contributions made by the British West Indies toward the cost of the war, relief funds, etc., amounted to over £3,250,000, the most notable amount included in that figure being the annual contribution of £60,000 for 40 years voted by the Jamaica Legislature.

Trade

The war brought about a remarkable revival of prosperity to the British West Indies. the total trade of those colonies rising from £25,809,884 in 1913 to £43,637,324 in 1919. The chief staples, sugar, rum, molasses, cacao, cotton and arrowroot, all commanded greatly enhanced prices, the only industry, indeed, that reaped no benefit being that of the production of lime and lime products in Dominica, which was adversely affected by the lack of shipping facilities and by import restrictions in the United States. Some anxiety was caused in 1912 by the decision of the Imperial Government to withdraw from the international convention for the suppression of sugar bounties and cartels, but the remaining high contracting Powers, having decided to adhere to that agreement, no ill effects resulted. Though Great Britain withdrew from the convention she decided to adhere to the principles of it and not to give a preference to sugar produced within the Empire or to cane over beet. In Aug. 1918 she gave to the signatories of the convention six months' notice of her intention to resume complete liberty of action in respect of her policy with regard to sugar, and the Finance Act of 1918 provided for the granting of a preference of one-sixth off the duties on sugar, molasses, tobacco, coffee, cacao and other products imported from within the Empire into the United Kingdom, and a preference of 2s. 6d. per gal. on rum.

Following an inquiry by a royal commission, of which the late Lord Balfour of Burleigh was chairman, in 1909, a conference was held at Ottawa in 1912 between representatives of the Dominion and the British West Indian colonies, the Bahamas, British Honduras and Jamaica excepted, to consider the question of closer trade between Canada and the West Indies, and on April 9 in that year an agreement was signed providing for a reciprocal trade agreement, the basis of which was a mutual preference of 20% on the chief products of the countries concerned, with a minimum preference on flour in favour of Canada, of 12 cents per 100 lb. and 15 cents on 96° test sugar not over No. 16 Dutch Standard in colour in favour of the British West Indies. Certain concessions which the Canadian refiners had enjoyed of importing foreign sugar at the British preferential rates were withdrawn. The agreement came into force on June 2 1913, and Grenada gave her adhesion to it in the same year.

In 1920 a further conference was held at Ottawa at which all the West Indian colonies, and also the Imperial Government, were represented. A new agreement was signed on June 18 1920 and brought into force in May 1921, under which Canada agreed to give to British West Indian products a tariff preference of 50%, whilst the British West Indies similarly agreed to extend to Canadian products tariff preferences of 50% in the case of Barbados, British Guiana and Trinidad, 333% in that of British Honduras, the Leeward Is. and the Windward Is., 25% in Jamaica, and io % in Bahamas, the Legislature of which colony afterwards voluntarily increased the preference to one of 25%. Certain products were again specifically dealt with, the preference on Canadian flour entering the West Indies being not less than is. per 196 lb. and that on West Indian sugar being not less than 83.712 cents per 100 lb. on 96° test. The Government of Canada further agreed to endeavour to arrange for a weekly freight, mail and passenger service, with steamers of 5,000 to 6,000 tons burthen, capable of steaming 12 knots per hour, between St. John (New Brunswick) or Halifax (Nova Scotia), down the islands lying to windward, British Guiana and back, the colonies contributing £27,000 per annum; also a service of freight, mail and passenger steamers of 3,500 tons burthen, capable of steaming 10 knots, from Canada to Nassau (Bahamas), Jamaica, Belize (British Honduras), and back, fortnightly, the colonies concerned contributing at the rate of £13,000 per annum toward any loss involved in the event of the service proving unremunerative. The Canada-British Honduras service was inaugurated in Jan. 1921.

A declaration appended to the agreement recommended for favourable consideration the laying of British-owned and British-controlled cables as soon as possible, to connect Bermuda with Barbados, Trinidad, British Guiana, the Windward Is., the Leeward Is., and Turks Is. or Jamaica.

Communications

In the matter of steamship communication the British West Indies were decidedly worse off after the war than be fore it. In 1915 the Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. terminated the transatlantic contract steamer service on the ground that they had been precluded from using their terminal port at Southampton. In the same year the fortnightly intercolonial contract service was also terminated by mutual agreement between the company and the colonies concerned. For some time thereafter the company continued to berth small passenger steamers for the West Indies at irregular intervals; but this service was also brought to an end in 1920, and passengers between the West Indies and the mother country were afterwards compelled to travel by foreign steamers, cargo boats, or via Canada or the United States. An intercolonial service was performed in 1921 by direct steamers running between St. John (New Brunswick) and Halifax (Nova Scotia), down the islands, and back. Under the Canada-West Indies trade agreement referred to above this service was to become a weekly one. The British Government, toward the close of the year 1920, agreed to contribute twothirds of the cost of a temporary transatlantic steamer service for three months if the West Indian colonies would provide one-third, but this proposal was not acceptable to all the colonies concerned, mainly because it was felt that the steamers which it was proposed to use were unsuitable. In 1921 the British Government further offered to contribute £90,000 per annum toward a subsidy for a transatlantic steamer service, and proposals were made for the invitation of tenders. This proposal was, however, rejected by Trinidad, which in 1921 enjoyed a fortnightly mail and passenger service provided by the Royal Netherlands West India Mail, free of expense to the colony. The Dutch line agreed in June 1921 to allow their steamers to call at Barbados as well as Trinidad.

Agriculture

In 1919 Visct. Milner appointed a committee to consider the desirability of establishing a tropical agricultural college in the West Indies, and in the event of their decision being favourable to report on the subject generally. The committee issued their report in 1920, favouring the establishment of a West Indian agricultural college in Trinidad. The proposals having commended themselves to the majority of the West Indian colonies, the agricultural college committee was called together again in the autumn of 1920 with a view to making the necessary arrangements for the incorporation of the college and for carrying out the plans generally. The objects for which the college was established are to afford to young men opportunities for instruction in the principles of agriculture and in the cultivation and preparation for market of tropical produce of every kind, including especially sugar and its byproducts, rum and molasses, cacao, coffee, cotton, coco-nuts, rice, citrus and other fruits (notably bananas), and dyewoods, many of which commodities constitute the raw materials employed in the manufactures of the mother country; for the training of scientific investigators in matters pertaining to tropical agriculture amid suitable surroundings; for creating a body of British expert agriculturists well versed in the knowledge of the cultivation of land in the tropics, and of scientific advisers possessing an intimate knowledge of the means of combating pests and diseases, the control of which is fundamentally essential to the successful development of agriculture in the tropics. Attached to the college will be a model sugar factory, the various units of which have been contributed by the principal British sugar machinery manufacturing and allied firms. Industries. - Sugar remained the principal staple. This industry was developed by the extension of the central factory system, whereby the canes from the surrounding estates, as well as those grown by peasant farmers, are dealt with at a central base, the concentration thus effected permitting of the instalment of machinery by which the maximum amount of sugar can be extracted from the cane. Thanks to the devoted care given to cultivation, and to the assistance of the local agricultural scientists who make it their constant aim to combat insect pests, the cacao industry, which is mainly centred in Trinidad and Grenada, continued to prosper. The Jamaica banana industry suffered from a succession of hurricanes in 1915, 1916 and 1917, but afterwards showed rapid recovery. The cultivation of citrus fruit on the other hand made little progress - except in Dominica, where the lime industry continued steadily to increase after the war - owing to the prohibitive import duties in the United States and the inadequacy of shipping facilities for fruit between the West Indies and Canada and the United Kingdom. The Sea Island cotton industry, which owed its development in the West Indies to the ravages of the boll-weevil in the United States, received a check in 1920, through the appearance of the still more dreaded boll-worm in St. Kitts and Montserrat, to which it was brought by a Brazilian vessel. A comparatively new industry, which made rapid progress, was that of rice. Formerly rice was imported into British Guiana in large quantities for the consumption of East Indian immigrants. Now that colony not only produces enough rice for its own requirements but also a substantial surplus which is available for export to the neighbouring colonies. The exports of rice from British Guiana rose from 45,223 lb. in 1905 to 18,110,400 lb., besides 4,390,051 lb. of paddy, in 1920.

Almost as rapid has been the development of the petroleum industry in Trinidad. The existence of petroleum deposits in Trinidad has long been recognized. As far back as 1864 the Trinidad Petroleum Co., promoted by Mr. H. B. Sheridan and the 11th Earl of Dundonald, started drilling for oil at La Brea. Oil was struck, but competition with the new oilfields in the United States proved too formidable, and this and other causes forced the company into liquidation. Two years later, a civil engineer, named Derwent, started boring at Aripero. He, too, struck oil, but failed to make a financial success of the venture. No further steps were taken toward winning oil until about 1900, when Mr. Randolph Rust, a local resident (Mayor of Port of Spain in 1921), imported modern oil-boring machinery and successfully struck oil at Aripero in 1901. Other prospectors came on the scene, and in 1910 followed the successful flotation of the Trinidad oilfields, and Trinidad enjoyed such a boom as no West Indian colony had experienced, at any rate for many a long day. On April 27 in the following year Sir George Le Hunte, the then governor, opened the valve at the end of the pipe line on Brighton pier, thus inaugurating the new industry, which has since been developed at a rapid rate. With many new wells being drilled it was certain that the production of oil, which in 1920 amounted to 72,905,947 gal., would undergo material expansion.

(A. E. A.)

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