West Indies

The West Indies is a subregion of North America bounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. It is comprised of 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories spread across three major archipelagos: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Lucayan Archipelago.

The Antilles are comprised of all of the islands in the area, as well as the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are located in the North Atlantic Ocean. Nowadays, the terms West Indies and Caribbean are often used interchangeably, although the latter term may also refer to some Central and South American mainland countries that have Caribbean coastlines, such as Belize, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, as well as the Atlantic island nations of Trinidad and Tobago and Bermuda, which are geographically distinct from the three main island groups but culturally related.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus became the first European to chronicle his arrival in the islands, where he is widely regarded to have been the first European to set foot on soil in The Bahamas. Following the first of Christopher Columbus' travels to the Americas, Europeans started to refer to this area as the West Indies in order to differentiate it from both the original "Indies" (i.e. India) and the East Indies (which included South Asia and Southeast Asia).