British colonial acquisition and administration have not…

British colonial acquisition and administration have not been neatly and easily accomplished.

Tobago had changed imperial masters more than a dozen times before finally being reacquired by Britain in 1802.

It will experience many forms of administration before being confirmed as a ward of Trinidad in 1898.

The Bahamas, irregularly colonized by the British beginning in 1649, had had a representative assembly in 1728 but eventually settle into a dull routine as a minor crown colony until the granting of complete internal self-government in January 1964.

The Cayman Islands, erratically settled by the British, had been administered by the Bahamas until 1848.

After a short period of legislative government (1848-63), they have reverted to the administration of Jamaica until 1962, when they will become a crown colony.

In 1871 the British groupd St. Kitts, Nevis, Barbuda, Anguilla, Antigua, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, and Dominica into the Leeward Islands Federation.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the British attempted to govern St. Lucia, St. Vincent, the Grenadines, Grenada, and Barbados under a single Windward Islands administration. Although this entity nominally existed until 1958, it was largely ineffective.