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The Antilles (or West Indies) are an archipelago stretching on a line roughly going east-west between Florida and Venezuela. Facing Central America on the west they separate the Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. To the west, the Greater Antilles (Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba) are believed to be the remnants of an ancient Central American mountain chain; to the east, the Lesser Antilles, a chain of smaller volcanic and limestone islands are extending north-south from the Virgin Islands to Grenada. The Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago and numerous islands lie close to the continental coasts of Florida, Venezuela, and Central America (see map).

To these we must add the Guyana (Guyana, Surinam and French Guyana) which, though mainland territories, are culturally part of the Caribbean world. In fact, as remarked David Lowenthal (West Indies Societies 1972, p.3) "yet like West Indies proper, the Guyana are really insular; virtually unpopulated swamp, savanna and rain-forest interiors isolate their inhabited coastal fringes form Brazil and Venezuela."

Except for a few islands (the Bahamas) the Antilles lie South of the Tropic of Cancer. The vegetation is exuberant; since Columbus' time the islands have been deforested but still retain and abundant and luxuriant vegetation. Apart from birds, there are few indigenous species of animals. There are no poisonous snakes (except in Martinique, St. Lucia and Trinidad); and before the coming of the Europeans there were no large mammals.

Due to their sub-tropical position the Antilles are peculiarly subject to natural cataclysm such as hurricanes, earthquakes and in some of the lesser Antilles volcanic eruptions.

The history and culture of the West Indies, as in Brazil or the United States, resulted from the brutal contact of three worlds: Native Americans (The Arawaks and The Caribs), Europeans and Africans. The consequences of that dramatic confrontation will be more easily understood by the reader if we briefly look back at the respective development of cultures which existed at the eve of Columbus' discovery.