There are 13 independent countries in the Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago. More than twenty other inhabited islands and island groups, including Puerto Rico, Aruba, Martinique and the Cayman Islands, are territories of the United States, the Netherlands, France or the United Kingdom rather than countries.
The 13 Countries at a Glance
| Country | Capital | Area | Population | Independent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cuba | Havana | 109,884 km² | ~10 million | 1902 |
| Dominican Republic | Santo Domingo | 48,671 km² | ~11.4 million | 1844 |
| Haiti | Port-au-Prince | 27,750 km² | ~11.8 million | 1804 |
| Bahamas | Nassau | 13,943 km² | ~400,000 | 1973 |
| Jamaica | Kingston | 10,991 km² | ~2.8 million | 1962 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | Port of Spain | 5,131 km² | ~1.4 million | 1962 |
| Dominica | Roseau | 751 km² | ~70,000 | 1978 |
| Saint Lucia | Castries | 616 km² | ~180,000 | 1979 |
| Antigua and Barbuda | St. John's | 442 km² | ~95,000 | 1981 |
| Barbados | Bridgetown | 430 km² | ~280,000 | 1966 |
| Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | Kingstown | 389 km² | ~100,000 | 1979 |
| Grenada | St. George's | 344 km² | ~120,000 | 1974 |
| Saint Kitts and Nevis | Basseterre | 261 km² | ~50,000 | 1983 |
Together they have about 38 million people, more than four-fifths of them in Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. All 13 are counted as part of North America.
The Greater Antilles: Three Countries on Three Islands
The four big islands in the north, Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica and Puerto Rico, are the Greater Antilles. Together they hold about nine-tenths of the Caribbean's land. Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, about 1,200 km long, and has the only communist government in the region. Guantánamo Bay on its south-east coast has been leased to the United States as a naval base since 1903. Jamaica rises to 2,256 m in the Blue Mountains, whose coffee is among the most expensive in the world.
Hispaniola is the only Caribbean island divided between two independent countries. Haiti holds the western third and the Dominican Republic the eastern two-thirds. The island has both the highest and lowest points in the Caribbean: Pico Duarte in the Dominican Republic reaches 3,098 m, and the salt lake of Lago Enriquillo, near the Haitian border, lies about 40 m below sea level. Haiti was the second country in the Americas to win independence, after the United States. It broke from France in 1804 after the only slave revolt in history to found a state, and it later ruled the Dominican Republic until 1844. The island also sits on an active fault zone. On 12 January 2010 a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince and killed well over 100,000 people, one of the deadliest earthquakes of modern times. Puerto Rico, the fourth island, is a United States territory of about 3.2 million people.
The Lesser Antilles: Volcanoes and Coral
East and south of Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles curve about 800 km towards South America. The arc is there because the Atlantic seafloor is sinking beneath the Caribbean Plate, and the islands of the inner arc are volcanoes built by that subduction. Several are still active. Mount Pelée on French Martinique destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre in 1902, killing about 28,000 people in minutes. Montserrat's Soufrière Hills buried the capital, Plymouth, after eruptions began in 1995, and more than half the population left. La Soufrière on Saint Vincent erupted explosively in April 2021, forcing about 16,000 people to evacuate.
Antigua and Barbuda belong to an older outer arc, where extinct volcanic rock is capped by limestone. Barbados sits further east, beyond both, and its surface is coral limestone lifted up from the sea floor, which is why it is flat and has no volcanoes. Our guide to Mount Pelée covers the most destructive eruption of the twentieth century.
Leeward, Windward and Other Confusing Names
The Lesser Antilles are traditionally split into the Leeward Islands in the north and the Windward Islands in the south. The names come from the age of sail and refer to the prevailing north-east trade winds. They are applied inconsistently. Under British colonial administration Dominica belonged to the Leeward Islands until 1940 and then moved to the Windward Islands, which is where most modern references put it. Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Kitts and Nevis are Leewards. Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and Dominica are Windwards. Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago are usually treated as outside both groups.
The term "West Indies" is older still. It comes from Columbus's belief in 1492 that he had reached Asia. It survives in the West Indies cricket team, which brings together players from the English-speaking Caribbean and Guyana, and in the University of the West Indies.
On the Edges: The Bahamas and Trinidad
Two of the 13 are not in the Caribbean Sea at all, or only just. The Bahamas lies in the Atlantic north of Cuba, a chain of about 700 low islands and cays on shallow limestone banks, of which around 30 are inhabited. It is grouped with the Caribbean for its history and culture rather than its location. It is also where the Caribbean's recorded history with Europe begins: Columbus's first landfall in October 1492 was on a Bahamian island its Lucayan inhabitants called Guanahani, usually identified as today's San Salvador. Trinidad, at the other end, stands on the South American continental shelf only about 11 km from Venezuela across the Serpent's Mouth. Its oil and gas, and the Pitch Lake, the world's largest natural deposit of asphalt, come from the geology it shares with the Venezuelan mainland.
Languages and Creoles
The official languages follow the colonial powers: English in ten countries, Spanish in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, French in Haiti. Everyday speech is more varied. Haitian Creole, spoken by nearly all of Haiti's population, is the most widely spoken creole language in the world. In Dominica and Saint Lucia, where English is official, many people also speak Kwéyòl, a French-based creole left from the islands' decades under French rule before Britain took them. Jamaica's everyday language is Jamaican Patois, an English-based creole with strong West African influences. On Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire, Papiamento, which blends Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and African languages, is an official language.
Trinidad and Tobago shows another layer. After slavery was abolished, Britain brought about 144,000 indentured labourers from India between 1845 and 1917, and people of Indian descent now make up roughly a third of the population. Diwali is a national holiday, and the Hindu and Muslim festivals of the Indo-Trinidadian community sit alongside Carnival in the national calendar.
Tourism, Finance and Oil
Most of the smaller island states depend heavily on tourism, and in several of them, including Antigua and Barbuda and the Bahamas, it is by far the largest industry. Some have built financial sectors too. The Bahamas is a major offshore banking centre, and five of the smaller states, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada and Saint Lucia, sell citizenship to foreign investors. Saint Kitts and Nevis started its programme in 1984, the oldest in the world. Trinidad and Tobago is the exception, an industrial economy built on oil and natural gas that exports liquefied gas worldwide. Haiti, by contrast, is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, while the Dominican Republic next door has been one of the fastest-growing economies in Latin America for two decades.
More Than Twenty Territories
Much of the Caribbean is still governed from outside. The United States holds Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. The United Kingdom has Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands. France's Guadeloupe and Martinique are full overseas departments and part of the European Union, and it also has Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy. Within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten are constituent countries, while Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba are Dutch special municipalities. The island of Saint Martin is shared between France and the Netherlands, which makes it the smallest inhabited island in the world divided between two countries.
How the Region Cooperates
The Caribbean Community, CARICOM, was founded by the Treaty of Chaguaramas in 1973 and has 15 full members. They are the English-speaking island states plus Haiti, Suriname, Guyana, Belize and the British territory of Montserrat. Cuba and the Dominican Republic are not members. Six of the smaller islands, together with Anguilla and Montserrat, share a single currency, the Eastern Caribbean dollar, fixed at 2.70 to the US dollar since 1976 and managed by a common central bank in Saint Kitts. More on the organisation is in our guide to CARICOM.
The whole region also shares the hurricane season, officially 1 June to 30 November. Hurricane Maria in 2017 devastated Dominica and Puerto Rico. Hurricane Beryl in July 2024 became the earliest Category 5 storm on record in the Atlantic and flattened much of Carriacou, part of Grenada, and Union Island in the Grenadines. Earlier storms left similar marks: Hurricane Gilbert crossed the full length of Jamaica in 1988, and Hurricane Ivan damaged about nine in ten buildings on Grenada in 2004. How these storms form is explained in our guide to how hurricanes form.