Revisiting the Transatlantic Triangle

Revisiting the Transatlantic Triangle is a comprehensive study of the decisive 5-year period between 1962 and 1967 which witnessed the unfolding of an intense decolonization dialogue between Britain and its far-flung Eastern Caribbean possessions at the height of the Cold War. The process of decolonization of the so-called “Little Eight”: Antigua-Barbuda, St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, Montserrat, Dominica, St Lucia, St Vincent, Grenada and Barbados, is often overlooked in the annals of postcolonial Caribbean history. The missing `revolutionary’ element in this decolonizing narrative downplays the significance and complexity of the transatlantic dialogue leading to Britain’s withdrawal from this colonial melting pot; disengagement negotiations that were decisively shaped by the wider geopolitical imperatives of an uneasy Anglo-American relationship. In this work, Raphael Cox Alomar tests the conceptual boundaries of the very meaning of decolonization as a socio-political phenomenon. Decolonization in this area of Britain’s colonial world was characterized by the gradual transfer of `instalments’ of sovereignty, rather than by the immediate devolution of full political authority. In the Eastern Caribbean, the decolonization process quickly became a multifaceted triangular dialogue entangling the Little Eight, London and Washington. Revisiting the Transatlantic Triangle is an authoritative and insightful interpretation and presentation of the decolonization process in the Eastern Caribbean.