In 1829, the Jackson administration asked for the reopening of the West India trade as a privilege on the terms of the act of 1825, and in 1830 the British government opened the trade, allowing American vessels to import any ar ticles which could be imported on British ves sels from the United States and to export from the West Indies to any country except British possessions any article which a British vessel could export.
The Parliamentary Emancipation Act of 1833 for the gradual extinguishment of colonial slavery in seven years, the consequent British policy of encouraging emancipation elsewhere and the activity of the British government and the British navy in attempts to stop the illegiti mate foreign slave trade which usually eluded capture by flying the American flag, greatly affected public sentiment in the United States and American relations with the West Indies. Among other sources of friction was that aris ing from the interstate slave trade by sea in American vessels from Chesapeake ports to Charleston or to New Orleans, or from Charles ton to New Orleans, and stopping at the Brit ish West Indies ports of the Bahamas, where under British jurisdiction the slaves were set free. In 1840, after long negotiations, England allowed indemnity in the cases of the Comet (wrecked 1831) and the Encomium (wrecked 1833). She refused payment in the case of the Enterprise (driven by stress of weather 1840). In the famous case of the Creole (1841), aris ing from a mutiny of the slaves, who carried the vessel into Nassau and were discharged by the British authorities, no agreement could be reached by 10 years of negotiations; but finally, by arbitration of Joshua Bates, an American born English banker, England paid an indem nity.Bates also decided that an indemnity was due in the case of the Enterprise and in the case of the Hermosa (wrecked 1841). For nearly two decades before the American Civil War, American foreign policy relating to the West Indies was largely influenced or domi nated by apprehensive fears of American slave holders that the safety of slavery in the South ern States might be endangered by the effects of emancipation in the British West Indies, through its influence upon neighboring islands and upon general British policy in the entire region, especially in Cuba. In the Civil War, the Bermudas or Nassau were used as stations from which blockade runners carried European goods into Confederate ports and returned with cotton —a very lucrative business. At Nassau the Confederate cruiser Florida, after escaping from England in 1862, was allowed by near sighted officials to arm and equip itself as a man-of-war and later to remain in port beyond the time allowed by international law. As a result of such incidents, which doubtless pro longed the war, the United States felt the need of West India harbors and naval stations, and after the war sought to strengthen its position by the acquisition of the Danish West Indies and San Domingo.
In 1884, when the United States, under a reciprocity policy inaugurated by President Ar thur in 1882, recognizing the need of less ob structed traffic with Cuba and Porto Rico, took steps to succor languishing Spanish interests in the West Indies by proposing a treaty of commerce to place trade on a more favorable footing (and negotiated a draft treaty which was later withdrawn from the Senate by Presi dent Cleveland), the British government made overtures for a like mutual extension of com mercial intercourse with the British West In dies and South American dependencies, but without results. On 4 Dec. 1884, Secretary Frelinghuysen submitted to the British repre sentative at Washington a project of a conven tion for commercial reciprocity between the United States and the British West Indies, but the British representative could not agree to the interpretation of the most-favored-nation clause.
Under provision of the McKinley tariff bill, John W. Foster, in 1891, entered into reciproc ity arrangements with Jamaica, Trinidad, Brit ish Guiana, Barbados, Leeward Islands and Windward Islands, nominally through negotia tions with the British Minister but really by separate conferences with delegations from each of the colonies. Jamaica hesitated, and reached an. agreement with considerable dif ficulty.
Since the Spanish-American War, resulting in an American protectorate over Cuba and American possession of Porto Rico, the United States has had a larger control in the entire Caribbean region — a control to which Great Britain contributed by reduction of her West India armaments following the Hay-Paunce fote treaty of 1901, resulting in American naval supremacy in the Caribbean. Coincident with these events, the British West Indies in trade relations have been growing more dependent upon the American market. They were quick to recognize that the probable entrance of Cuban and Porto Rican sugar into the United States free of duty would have important sig nificance in relation to their commercial and political future. In Jamaica and at a confer ence in Barbados, in August 1898, there was much discussion in favor of annexation to the United States in case Great Britain should fail to take action for protection of their sugar interests.
Economically the British West Indies have become an appanage of the United States, de pendent for their prosperity upon favorable American customs duties. For this reason Trinidad and other islands hesitated to enter the Canadian preferential agreement of 1913 which is now in force. The recent gravitation toward the United States has resulted in prop ositions for a vigorous Caribbean confederation with a responsible government as a means to counteract this tendency.