The State, Nationalism and Security: the Case of the Anglophone Caribbean

Abstract

As a reaction to the gradual dismemberment of formal empires in the post-World Wars era, it came to be accepted that a state’s territorial boundary had become its most specific and inviolable feature (Abbott 1972). Even when the state was seen to possess questionable viability, due to small size and limited resources among other features, its right to exist as a sovereign political unit no longer came to be challenged. For a time, British imperial authorities felt that it was imperative that the states under British rule in the Caribbean move towards political and administrative integration in order to survive and function in the international system. In the post-World War period, when the constitutional decolonisation process was in full swing in the major countries of the anglophone Caribbean, the British effort was directed toward the establishment of a federation of these states. This became a reality in 1958 and a failure in 1962.