Welcome to the West India Committee’s online portal for West Indian History, Heritage and Culture. The West India Committee collection contains over 500 years of knowledge on the Caribbean and matters relating to the Caribbean and, due to its significance, it has been recognised as a UNESCO Memory of the World. This website has been made possible thanks to the generous support of The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

In our Topics section, you can find short articles and e-books from our heritage projects. We have also produced some short videos for some projects which can be found on their respective project pages and on our YouTube channel.

Using our library and archive, in conjunction with other collections, the West India Committee works to reveal the hidden histories of the peoples of the Caribbean and their diasporas around the world. Our recent heritage projects projects include The Caribbean’s Great War, The Thames River Police: Forefathers of Modern Policing, The History and Heritage of the Cayman Islands and The West Indian Soldier.

We have digitised some of the items in our collection, which are available in the Archive section, and, where possible, these records have been, where possible, made searchable. These are historic records, the vast majority over a century old, which we have made available to researchers wishing to study original materials. Many contain language and opinions incompatible with modern values, and do not reflect the opinions of the West India Committee.

You can similarly find photos, prints and other images from the collection in the Gallery section. We would also like to thank our partners, who have kindly consented to making some of their records available on this website.

If you would like to visit the West India Collection for your own research or heritage project, please look here for more information.

Click here to purchase merchandise or a West India Committee publication on the Committee’s Trading Post. All content featured on this website, unless indicated otherwise, is copyrighted by the West India Committee and cannot be used without permission. Please contact the West India Committee here for printed copies of images featured on this website and for all other enquiries. Our privacy policy can be found here.