The West India Committee is a British-based organisation promoting ties and trade with the British Caribbean. It operates as a charity and NGO (non-governmental organisation). It evolved out of a lobbying group formed in 1780 to represent the interests of the

plantocracy A slavocracy, also known as a plantocracy, is a ruling class, political order or government composed of (or dominated by) slave owners and plantation owners. A number of early European colonies in the New World were largely plantocracies, usually ...

. Historically, the principal commodities of the region were

cane sugar Sucrose, a disaccharide, is a sugar composed of glucose and fructose subunits. It is produced naturally in plants and is the main constituent of white sugar. It has the molecular formula . For human consumption, sucrose is extracted and refine ...

rum Rum is a liquor made by fermenting and then distilling sugarcane molasses or sugarcane juice. The distillate, a clear liquid, is usually aged in oak barrels. Rum is produced in nearly every sugar-producing region of the world, such as the Ph ...

, mahogany, other softwood, spices and tropical produce, early on largely confined to types that would last a long transatlantic voyage such as

coffee Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world. Seeds of ...

, nuts and desiccated coconut but later expanded to include tropical fruits in general.

London Society of West India Planters and Merchants

The London Society of West India Planters and Merchants was established to represent the views of the British West Indian

. The organisation played a major role in resisting the

abolition of the slave trade Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

and that of

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

itself. The Society was formed in 1780, and brought together three different groups: British sugar merchants, absentee plantation owners and colonial agents. (See

Sugar plantations in the Caribbean Sugar plantations in the Caribbean were a major part of the economy of the islands in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Most Caribbean islands were covered with sugar cane fields and mills for refining the crop. The main source of labor, unti ...

.) The society started with a predominantly Jamaican leadership, but as emancipation approached, by the 1830s the leadership came to include a broader ranger of planter interests from across the British Caribbean. The society evolved into the West India Committee.

West India Committee

In 1904, the committee received a

royal charter A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, but s ...

of incorporation at the initiative of the British government. It later acquired charitable status and established two subsidiary bodies: *The Caribbean Council for Europe (CCE) *The Caribbean Trade Advisory Group (Caritag). Among its records are, for example, eight collections of Caribbean and English newspapers 1761–1846, reports of the Acting Committee to the Half-Yearly Meeting of the Standing Committee of West India Planters and Merchants, 1878–1883, and albums of photographs and press cuttings on the 1907 Kingston earthquake in Jamaica, a country that was a major subject of its promotion work.

The modern organisation

The West India Committee exists to promote and support agriculture, manufacturing, and trade in the West Indies, Guyana and Belize, "to increase the general welfare of the people of those territories and their global diaspora through education, training, acting as an advocate, adviser and where necessary, as an umbrella organisation". It seeks to bring Caribbean businesses to the attention of the world's major markets. The Chief Executive is Blondel Cluff CBE, who is also the

Anguilla Anguilla ( ) is a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Saint Martin. The terr ...

government's representative in the United Kingdom.

Notable officers

From at least 1915 until 1929, its Secretary was Algernon Aspinall, who, in the name of his committee, published geographical guides to Guyana and the British Caribbean, such as a 1907 '' Stanford's Guide'': ''Pocket Guide to the West Indies'' and ''The Handbook of the British West Indies, British Guiana and British Honduras'' (1929). Sir

Eliot de Pass Sir Eliot Arthur de Pass (16 March 1851 – 11 July 1937) was an English merchant in the West Indies. He was the founder of EA de Pass & Co., which specialised in trading sugar and coffee from Jamaica. Early life and family De Pass was born in ...

served first as an ordinary member of the Committee, then as its chairman from 1925 to 1936, and finally as president until his death the following year.

References

External links