Lesser and Greater Antilles / Windward and Leeward
Islands
Up, down, north, south, Lesser Antilles, Windward islands; it can all be a little confusing.
We are going to dissect the island that make up the geographic network of the Caribbean.
Which islands are in the Greater Antilles and Lesser Antilles?
The West Indies are composed of the islands of the Caribbean Sea and can be divided into the Greater
Antilles and the Lesser Antilles.
The Greater Antilles comprises of the four largest islands in the northwestern portion of the
Caribbean Sea and include:




Cuba
Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic)
Jamaica
Puerto Rico
(They get the name greater Antilles because they are so much bigger than the rest of the Caribbean islands.)
The Lesser Antilles: Comprises of the smaller islands of the Caribbean and broken up into two
groups( the Windward Islands and Leeward Islands.)
The Lesser Antilles chain starts in the Virgin Islands and wraps the eastern Caribbean all the way
down to Trinidad and Tobago.
The island of the Lesser Antilles include:










The Virgin Islands
St. Martin (Guadeloupe (north part)
and Netherlands Antilles (south part))
St. Eustatius (Netherlands Antilles)
Antigua
St. Kitts
Montserrat
Dominica
Saint Lucia
St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Trinidad & Tobago










Anguilla
Saba (Netherlands Antilles)
St. Barts
Barbuda
Nevis
Guadeloupe
Martinique
Barbados
Grenada
The British Virgin Islands
The Windward Islands and Leeward Islands
The Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands are part of the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean Sea.
The Windward Islands are southeastern islands of the Caribbean. They’re called the Windward Islands
because they’re exposed to the wind (“windward”) of the northeast trade winds (northeasterlies).
The Windward Islands include:

Martinique

Barbados

St. Lucia

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Grenada
The Leeward Islands are the northwestern islands of the Lesser Antilles. They are called the
Leeward Islands because they are away from the wind (“lee”).
The Leeward Islands include:









Virgin Islands
Dominica
Guadeloupe
Montserrat
Antigua
Barbuda
St. Kitts
Nevis
Anguilla
Colonization is the act of setting up a colony away from one's place of origin. ... With humans,
colonization is sometimes seen as a negative act because it tends to involve an invading culture
establishing political control over an indigenous population (the people living there before the arrival of
the settlers).