Seeing race, seeing nation: Conceptualizing a 'united West Indies' in the British Caribbean and diaspora

This dissertation investigates the multiple conceptualizations and expectations attached to the idea of forming a "united West Indies" through a federation of British Caribbean colonies in the twentieth century. While ideas for various configurations of regional unity date back to the seventeenth century, in the twentieth century, such ideas reemerged as a crucial issue within many discussions of the "West Indian future". Despite an ostensibly common goal, the push for a Caribbean federation in the twentieth century embodied numerous and often competing concerns reflecting the region's lengthy history as a crossroads of European colonialism, creole nationalism, and black diaspora activism.; Moving beyond the short-lived West Indies Federation (1958-1962) and rooted in both Caribbean and diasporic contexts, this study examines how colonial power brokers in the West Indies and metropole, Caribbean peoples living in the West Indies, United States, and United Kingdom, as well as other black peoples on both sides of the Atlantic (especially those involved in black diaspora politics), envisioned and debated such a West Indian nation from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. While many colonial officials and local oligarchies believed federation could provide administrative efficiency and economic prosperity via a "united status quo", West Indian nationalists and black diaspora activists often viewed federation as a nation-building venture embodied with varying notions of liberation and self-determination. By approaching the history of Caribbean federation in this manner, this study provides a key example of how Caribbean nation-building simultaneously existed as an imperial, regional and diasporic nation-building project, as well as transracial and racialized ventures.