British Windward Islands


The British Windward Islands was a British colony in the Windward Islands of the West Indies, existing between 1833 and 1960 and consisting of the islands of Grenada, St Lucia, Saint Vincent, the Grenadines, Barbados, Tobago, and Dominica, previously included in the British Leeward Islands.
The colony was known as the Federal Colony of the Windward Islands from 1871 to June 1956, and then as the Territory of the Windward Islands until its dissolution in 1960.

History

The capital was Bridgetown on Barbados, from 1871 to 1885, and thereafter St. George's on Grenada. The islands were not a single colony, but a confederation of separate colonies with a common governor-in-chief, while each island retained its own institutions. The Windward Islands had neither legislature, laws, revenue nor tariff in common. There was, however, a common court of appeal for the group as well as for Barbados, composed of the chief justices of the respective islands, and there was also a common audit system, while the islands united in maintaining certain institutions of general utility.
In 1939 the Windward and Leeward Islands Supreme Court and the Windward and Leeward Islands Court of Appeal were established, which was replaced in 1967 by the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court which provides both functions.
;Chief Justices of the Windward and Leeward Islands