18. An abortive attempt by the imminently independent Caribbean colonies of Great Britain, the West Indies Federation was a brief attempt at collective secession before departing to continue on their separate ways into statehood
Desiring independence from the United Kingdom, in 1958 several British colonies in the Caribbean united in a joint-effort to become independent as a single state akin to the Australian Commonwealth. Consisting of twelve island colonies, including Jamaica, Grenada, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago, these polities banded together to form the Federation of the West Indies on January 3, 1958. Despite domestic support for independence, the federation was poorly constituted and immediately encountered major political problems. Most notably, the larger islands, such as Jamaica, contested the strength of the federal government and struggled against domination by a collective of smaller islands.
Not forming a customs union between the islands, nor possessing the powers of taxation, the Federation quickly spiraled into a quagmire. Dissatisfied with the lack of progress towards independence after three years, in September 1961 Jamaica quit the federation. Previously the economic powerhouse of the collective, and unable to find sufficient recourse to remain viable – with Trinidad required to provide seventy-five to eighty percent of the federation’s funding thereafter – on May 31, 1962, the union was formally dissolved. Becoming separate colonies once more, many of these islands would quickly move to secure their own independence from the United Kingdom in the years which followed.