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51 sats \ 5 replies \ @optimism 14h \ parent \ on: Interest Rates by Country in 2025 (Map) econ
USVI was bought from the Danes, whereas BVI was under British control for 400 years or so. They weren't all that divided by the time the US took an interest.
Prior to that, these islands were under alternating Spanish/Dutch/Danish/British claim. But since there were no satellites or underseas cables, the confusion was real. Hah.
That's fun. I can imagine "ownership" might be fairly fluid depending on who had the biggest ships in the area.
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It's not like there was a UN, so finders keepers. And sometimes you may find something that you wanna shoot some cannonballs at before you keep it.
Truth be told though: I hang with islanders the moment I stop working every day since 6+ years now, and I feel a lot of sympathy for their thought on this: they're all foreign invaders and slave drivers. The original descendants of island people that inhabited the places before the Spanish took over in the 16th century are now mostly found on land, like Guyana, and perhaps some areas of Surinam and eastern Venezuela.
That said, I'm digging some into documentaries to get a broader perspective of what went on. I've seen some English and Dutch made works on how their dominance came to be, but since I've just found a translated Japanese documentary about the Dutch part, I think I can go way deeper and get a 3rd perspective on it all. Which would be cool.
I'll leave a post in the morning about this particular documentary because it actually went deeper on background than what I've seen on the Dutch ones, including an outside perspective on why Spain lost it's empire (and it's triggering!) I hope to find similar things for at least the Britain and Denmark side of this.
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My understanding is that the inhabitants of many Caribbean Islands, at the time of Spanish arrival, were themselves fairly recent conquerors from South America.
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Possible, though I remember from reading Rousseau that the native inhabitants, which iirc he called "Carribbean wildmen" were there for 100s of years. Another rabbit hole that I will gladly append to my stated rabbit hole above.
The older I get, the more I feel inclined to learn history and the more I regret being too practical and forward looking as a youngster.
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Keep us posted
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