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Windward Islands history - learn what once happend
For some time after Columbus's exploration of the islands, the Windward islands were largely ignored by Europeans and left to the indigenous Caribs. In the early 17th cent., colonization was undertaken by the British and the French; settlements and sovereignty overlapped. The long struggle for dominance in the islands was a significant part of the worldwide Anglo-French conflict. Several naval battles were fought there; in 1782, off Saint Lucia, the French Admiral de Grasse was defeated by Admiral Rodney. In the Napoleonic Wars the islands traded hands, and it was only after the close of the conflict that Britain established its dominance over them. The name Windward islands was also used to refer to a British colony on several of these islands, existing between 1833 and 1960 and consisting of the islands of Grenada, St Lucia, Saint Vincent, the Grenadines, Barbados (seat of the governor to 1885, when it became a separate colony), Tobago (to 1889 when it was joined to Trinidad), and Dominica (from 1940, when it was transferred from the Leeward Islands colony to the Windward Islands). The colony was known as the Federal Colony of the Windward Islands from 1871 to June 1956, and then as the Territory of the Windward Islands to its dissolution in 1960. Its capital was Saint George's on Grenada (originally Bridgetown on Barbados, 1871-1885). They were not a single colony, but a confederation of separate colonies with a common governor-in-chief, while each island retained its own institutions, and they had neither legislature, laws, revenue nor tariff in common. There was, however, a common court of appeal for the group as well as for Barbados, composed of the chief justices of the respective islands, and there was also a common audit system, while the islands unite in maintaining certain institutions of general utility.
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Windward Islands Vacations site
Our company is running one of the largest pc and mobile travel website networks, covering top hotel, vacation package, airline ticket, beach, cruise, all inclusive and honeymoon destinations worldwide.
We will also run a travel blog portal which centralises the blogs posted by our visitors on all of our websites and which represents one of the world's best travel information resources, totally build by people such as yourself.
In the link section, you can check more links to our travel website network as well as to other third party specialized websites as lastminute.com or orbitz.com which we suggest you to visit if are you planning a trip to Windward Islands .
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