Montserrat in the context of "British Caribbean Currency Board"

Antigua and Barbuda is a sovereign archipelagic country in the Caribbean composed of Antigua, Barbuda, and numerous other small islands. Antigua and Barbuda has a total area of 440 km (170 sq mi), making it one of the smallest countries in the Caribbean. The country is mostly flat, with the highest points on Antigua being in the Shekerley Mountains and on Barbuda the Highlands. The country has a tropical savanna climate, with pockets of tropical monsoon in Antigua's southwest. Its most populated city is St. John's, followed by All Saints and Bolans. Most of the country resides in the corridor between St. John's and English Harbour.

Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Caribbean Sea on the west, Antigua and Barbuda is located within the Leeward Islands moist forest and Leeward Islands xeric scrub ecoregions. The country shares maritime borders with Anguilla, Saint Barthélemy, and Saint Kitts and Nevis to the west, Montserrat to the southwest, and Guadeloupe to the south. Antigua and Barbuda has numerous natural parks, including Codrington Lagoon, one of the largest internal bodies of water in the Lesser Antilles. Despite its dense population, the country has large swaths of undeveloped land, however, Antigua and Barbuda has experienced many environmental issues due to climate change.

The Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) is one of the world's four regional currency unions. The union is a development of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, in which the member countries agree to share the same currency, the Eastern Caribbean dollar (EC dollar).

The ECCU is composed of the nations of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the British territories of Anguilla and Montserrat.

Guadeloupe is an overseas department and region of the French Republic in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands—Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, La Désirade, and two Îles des Saintes—as well as many uninhabited islands and outcroppings. It is south of Antigua and Barbuda and Montserrat and north of Dominica. The capital city is Basse-Terre, on the southern west coast of Basse-Terre Island; the most populous city is Les Abymes and the main centre of business is neighbouring Pointe-à-Pitre, both on Grande-Terre Island. It had a population of 395,726 in 2024.

Like the other overseas departments, it is an integral part of France. As a constituent territory of the European Union (EU) and the eurozone, the euro is its official currency and any EU citizen is free to settle and work there indefinitely, but it is not part of the Schengen Area. It included Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin until 2007, when they were detached from Guadeloupe following a 2003 referendum.

The British West Indies (BWI) were the territories in the West Indies under British rule, including Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, British Honduras, British Guiana and Trinidad and Tobago.

The Kingdom of England first established colonies in the region during the 17th century. Financed by valuable extractive commodities such as sugar production, the colonies were also at the centre of the Atlantic slave trade, with around 2.3 million slaves being brought to the British West Indies. The colonies also served as bases to project the power of the British Empire through the Royal Navy and Britain's Merchant Marine, and to expand and protect British overseas trade. Before the decolonization of the Americas in the later 1950s and 1960s, the term "British West Indies" was regularly used to include all British colonies in the region as part of the British Empire. Following the independence of most of the territories from the United Kingdom, the term Commonwealth Caribbean is now used.

Hurricane Hugo was a powerful tropical cyclone that inflicted widespread destruction across the northeastern Caribbean and the Southeastern United States in September 1989. The eleventh tropical cyclone, eighth named storm, sixth hurricane, and second major hurricane of the 1989 Atlantic hurricane season, Hugo arose from a cluster of thunderstorms near Cape Verde on September 10, 1989. This cluster coalesced into a tropical depression and strengthened into Tropical Storm Hugo as it tracked west across the Atlantic Ocean for several days. On September 13, Hugo became a hurricane and continued to intensify through September 15 when its sustained winds peaked at 160 mph (255 km/h), making it a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale. Between September 17 and 21, Hugo made landfall on Guadeloupe, Saint Croix, Puerto Rico, and lastly South Carolina, with major hurricane strength winds. The storm weakened inland and accelerated north over the Eastern United States, transitioning into an extratropical cyclone on September 23 before it was last noted in the far northern Atlantic on September 25.

Hugo left extensive damage in its wake, causing 61 deaths and $11 billion (equivalent to $28 billion in 2024) in damage, which at the time, made it the costliest tropical cyclone on record worldwide. Guadeloupe bore the brunt of the storm in the Leeward Islands. Three thousand houses were unroofed, contributing to the displacement of 35,000 people from their homes. Hugo was Montserrat's costliest hurricane on record and brought down the island's entire power grid. Ninety percent of homes on the island suffered significant to total roof loss after the island was struck by the eyewall. The hurricane's impacts continued into the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, causing over $1 billion in damage. Wind gusts up to 168 mph (270 km/h) were measured in Saint Croix, where property damage exceeded $500 million with over 90 percent of buildings damaged; three people were killed on the island. Widespread damage occurred in Puerto Rico and much of the island suffered power and water service failures. Eight people were killed in Puerto Rico and nearly 28,000 people were left homeless. In the mainland United States, coastal South Carolina was hit by record setting storm surge heights, reaching 20.2 ft (6.2 m) near McClellanville. The surge and strong winds wrought extensive damage to buildings and infrastructure across South Carolina, and caused 13 deaths. Flood and wind impacts followed Hugo across much of the Eastern United States into Eastern Canada.

Chytridiomycosis (/kaɪˌtrɪdiəmaɪˈkoʊsɪs/ ky-TRID-ee-ə-my-KOH-sis) is an infectious disease in amphibians, caused by the chytrid fungi Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans. Chytridiomycosis has been linked to dramatic population declines or extinctions of amphibian species in western North America, Central America, South America, eastern Australia, east Africa (Tanzania), and Dominica and Montserrat in the Caribbean. Much of the New World is also at risk of the disease arriving within the coming years. The fungus is capable of causing sporadic deaths in some amphibian populations and 100% mortality in others. No effective measure is known for control of the disease in wild populations. Various clinical signs are seen by individuals affected by the disease. A number of options are possible for controlling this disease-causing fungus, though none has proved to be feasible on a large scale. The disease has been proposed as a contributing factor to a global decline in amphibian populations that apparently has affected about 30% of the amphibian species of the world. Some research found evidence insufficient for linking chytrid fungi and chytridiomycosis to global amphibian declines, but more recent research establishes a connection and attributes the spread of the disease to its transmission through international trade routes into native ecosystems.

The West Indies Federation, also known as the West Indies, the Federation of the West Indies or the West Indian Federation, was a short-lived political union that existed from 3 January 1958 to 31 May 1962. Various islands in the Caribbean that were part of the British Empire, including Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Jamaica, and those on the Leeward and Windward Islands, came together to form the Federation, with its capital in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The expressed intention of the Federation was to create a political unit that would become independent from Britain as a single state – possibly similar to Australia, Canada, or Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Before that could happen, the Federation collapsed due to internal political conflicts over how it would be governed or function viably. The formation of a West Indian Federation was encouraged by the United Kingdom, but also requested by pan-Caribbean nationalists.

The territories that would have become part of the Federation eventually became the nine contemporary sovereign states of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago; with Anguilla, Montserrat, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands becoming British overseas territories. British Guiana and British Honduras held observer status within the West Indies Federation.

Antiguan and Barbudan Creole is an English-based creole language that emerged from contact between speakers of the Kwa languages and speakers of Antiguan and Barbudan English in the Leeward Islands. Today, it is natively spoken in Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Anguilla, Montserrat, and some villages in Dominica. Antiguan and Barbudan Creole is the most spoken language in two independent countries, and is one of the most spoken languages in the eastern Caribbean. The language has approximately 150,000 native speakers.

Antiguan and Barbudan Creole is composed of several distinct varieties, some of which are only semi-intelligible to each other. Due to increased contact between settlements in the Leeward Islands, the creole has many extinct village-specific varieties that have since merged into each other. The most spoken variety of the creole, North Antiguan, has been particularly affected by decreolisation and influences from other English creoles.