The British Virgin Islands: A West Indian Anomaly

Abstract

C IRCULATION of people, goods, and ideas among the politically separated islands of the West Indies is rare. Parallel economnic development and similarity of products have sharply limited local commerce. This fact, together with poor transport facilities, tariff controls, and other political barriers, has oriented the Indies more toward outside areas than toward one another. For the colonial islands, trade is largely determined by political affliation: economic integration is closest with the governing power and, occasionally, with other dependencies under the same flag.' For independent units, such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, the chief ties are with middle-latitude markets, particularly the United States.2 A traveler in the West Indies often finds it less difficult to send mail, or to book passage, to Miami, New York, or Mexico City than to a nearby island. He finds, further, that the local press is notoriously weak on 4regional news, and that the man in the street seems to have greater interest in, and knowledge of, events abroad than of those in the other islands of the Caribbean. In short, fragmentation rather than integration seems to be the dominant pattern of relationship in the West Indies. The British Virgin Islands (B.V.I.) are an exception to this pattern. Politically the islands constitute one of the four presidencies in Britain's Leeward Islands colony. They are, however, the outermost of these units, and for most purposes they have established stronger socioeconomic ties with the American Virgin Islands (A.V.I.) and, indirectly, with the United States than with either Britain or other British possessions. St. Thomas in the American Virgins not only is the principal export market and the chief source of imports but also offers more opportunity for wage employment to B.V.I. labor than can be found at home. Currently, the economy of the presidency is so closely linked with that of its American neighbors that it functions exclusively with American currency. The British islanders will accept only United States money for goods and services, and even the British