A Transnational World Fractured but Not Forgotten: British West Indian Migration to the Colombian Islands of San Andrés and Providence

This article examines British West Indian migration to the Colombian archipelago of San Andrés and Providence in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. While the United Fruit plantations, Panama Canal, oil fields in Venezuela, and railroad projects in Central America generated a strong demand for a large West Indian workforce, no such development took place on San Andrés and Providence. As a result, the profile of West Indian migration looks different than to the Spanish-speaking circum-Caribbean, with more professionals and merchants and fewer unskilled laborers. In the absence of mass migration, there was less hostility toward West Indian newcomers to San Andrés and Providence islands.