Once the home of Arawak and Carib peoples, it became an English colony after settlers arrived in 1650.

BBC: Anguilla profile

French colonists arrived in the 17th century, wiping out the Carib population.

BBC: Guadeloupe profile

Visited by the explorer Christopher Columbus in 1493, who named it after a Spanish monastery, the territory was home to Carib indians who resisted Spanish attempts to settle the islands.

BBC: Guadeloupe profile

He gave the selectors almost no option but to pick him after hitting a match-winning century in the Carib Challenge final after his first season for Jamaica, though it was not easy for him at the start.

BBC: Windies switch pays off for Nash

There are also Creoles, who speak a Creole dialect of English and are often of African and African-European extraction, and Garifuna, who are descended from Carib Indians and Africans, as well as a number of smaller ethnic groups.

BBC: Belize country profile

The Garifuna people are descendants of Carib Indians (South American natives who settled on the Caribbean island of St Vincent) and West Africans who were said to have escaped from Spanish slave ships in 1635 and made the island their home.

BBC: Travel - Slideshow - Gar��funa life in Belize