To­day is a sig­nif­i­cant day in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States, as it marks its 249th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence from be­ing a colony of Britain, in the pe­ri­od when the “sun did not set” on “Rule Bri­tan­nia.” It’s not on­ly an im­por­tant event for the in­de­pen­dent US, but the break­away from colo­nial rule must have served as a form of in­spi­ra­tion for dozens of for­mer colonies around the world in the hun­dreds of years af­ter.

No­tably, the Amer­i­can Found­ing Fa­thers, in­clud­ing Thomas Jef­fer­son, George Wash­ing­ton, Alexan­der Hamil­ton (the lat­ter born in Nevis in the Caribbean) and oth­ers, took their cue from those who host­ed the Boston Tea Par­ty (1773), in which the re­bel­lion against colo­nial­ism re­sult­ed in the sink­ing of British ships car­ry­ing large quan­ti­ties of tea. It was a stance against British colo­nial rule, in­clud­ing the adop­tion of the po­si­tion of “no tax­a­tion with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion.” Not too in­ci­den­tal­ly, that theme had res­o­nance with res­i­dents of Port-of-Spain at the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry here in Trinidad. The Red House, as the sym­bol of colo­nial gov­er­nance, was burnt to the ground as the au­thor­i­ties in­fa­mous­ly re­moved the bor­ough coun­cil from rep­re­sent­ing the peo­ple of the city.

And while it took In­dia and sev­er­al coun­tries in Africa and the West In­dies 170-plus years af­ter the Amer­i­can In­de­pen­dence to gain their for­mal in­de­pen­dence from Britain, emer­gence from colo­nial rule is an ex­pe­ri­ence we share in this re­gion with the US.

The point of this his­tor­i­cal record is that there are sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween the se­cur­ing of in­de­pen­dence of the Amer­i­can Colonies and that of the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean from Britain.

Over the pe­ri­od since, mil­lions of T&T and Caribbean na­tion­als have lived, worked, con­tributed to and con­tin­ue to do so to the amaz­ing growth and de­vel­op­ment of the Amer­i­can colonies, now gath­ered to­geth­er in the Fed­er­al States.

We in the re­gion, there­fore, can le­git­i­mate­ly claim a long-stand­ing, deep cul­tur­al, po­lit­i­cal, and eco­nom­ic re­la­tion­ship with the US. In do­ing so, on this an­niver­sary of the in­de­pen­dence of the Unit­ed States, we recog­nise the bond be­tween the “Big Broth­er” of the north with T&T and the rest of the Eng­lish-speak­ing re­gion. It’s a re­la­tion­ship which goes back to trad­ing in the 18th cen­tu­ry and the trek north­wards by West In­di­ans to the US over gen­er­a­tions.

As can be ex­pect­ed, the US-West In­di­an re­la­tion­ship has not al­ways been smooth and ben­e­fi­cial to the is­lands, but the fact is that an es­ti­mat­ed four to five mil­lion West In­di­ans, in­clu­sive of their de­scen­dants born there, make up the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion of to­day. In this re­gard, gen­er­a­tions of West In­di­ans have con­tributed in very sig­nif­i­cant ways to the world-leader sta­tus ex­er­cised by the Unit­ed States.

Our ex­pe­ri­ence over the cen­turies is one in which there have been free-trade agree­ments in our favour with the US, as­sis­tance in mon­i­tor­ing var­i­ous forms of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties in the wa­ters of the Caribbean and in many ways prac­ti­cal as­sis­tance from the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment and peo­ple, in­clud­ing a few gen­er­a­tions of West In­di­an stu­dents go­ing to Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties.

But as in­di­cat­ed above, it has not been a one-way stream, Caribbean peo­ple in the US have con­tributed to the eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment of their adopt­ed coun­try.