Family research · Hub · Phase 10 of the world atlas

Flags of the Caribbean

Thirteen island nations, each with its own flag lineage — seven traced in one interactive map below that shows how they changed hands across five centuries, one slider-turn at a time, plus six more Eastern Caribbean ministates profiled alongside them. Every one is coastal, insular, and surrounded by open water — this hub is mostly sea.

Every deep dive is linked below (future pages, not yet built). Drag the map's slider first to see the seven-country story at a glance, or press play and watch it run.

The seven lineages

5 flags · 1492–present Cuba The Cross of Burgundy, an 1849 exile-designed Lone Star, US military occupation, and the republic of 1902. 4 flags · 1509–present Jamaica Spanish Santiago de la Vega, three centuries under the Union Jack, and 1962's black, green, and gold. 6 flags · 1492–present Haiti Saint-Domingue's white fleur-de-lis, Dessalines' torn tricolor, a short-lived kingdom, the republic today. 5 flags · 1492–present Dominican Republic Santo Domingo's Spanish centuries, 22 years of Haitian unification, and the white cross Duarte's movement raised in 1844. 3 flags · 1492–present Bahamas Lucayan depopulation, two centuries of British colonial ensigns, and 1973's black, gold, and aquamarine. 4 flags · 1498–present Trinidad & Tobago Spanish neglect, an 1797 British capture, Tobago's own separate colonial history, and 1962's red, black, and white. 3 flags · 1627–present Barbados Uninterrupted British rule from 1627 to 1966, then the trident and ultramarine of independence.

Six more islands in this hub

The Eastern Caribbean's Lesser Antilles ministates — mostly former British colonies, independent between 1974 and 1983. They aren't yet traced in the interactive map above (that would take real GeoJSON work this hub hasn't done), but they belong in this hub and are profiled here.

Independence 1981 Antigua & Barbuda British colony from 1632 (Antigua), a sugar-plantation economy built on enslaved labor, part of the short-lived West Indies Federation (1958–62), independence in 1981. Independence 1978 Dominica Sighted by Columbus on a Sunday in 1493, giving it its name, and fiercely contested between France and Britain for over a century; one of the last Caribbean islands where the indigenous Kalinago (Carib) retain a territory today. Independence 1974 Grenada French colonial control ceded to Britain in 1763. Independence came in 1974, before the 1979 Grenada Revolution led by Maurice Bishop's New Jewel Movement and the 1983 US-led invasion that followed Bishop's execution. Independence 1983 Saint Kitts & Nevis Site of the first permanent English (1623) and French Caribbean colonies, a sugar economy, and the smallest sovereign state in the Americas by both area and population — the last former British Caribbean territory to gain independence. Independence 1979 Saint Lucia Changed hands between Britain and France fourteen times — more than any other Caribbean island — before settling as a British possession from 1814 until independence in 1979. Independence 1979 Saint Vincent & the Grenadines Home to the Garifuna, descendants of West African and indigenous Kalinago ancestry, exiled by the British to Central America in 1797; a British colony until independence in 1979.

Five centuries, one map

A real, traced map — actual coastlines projected from GeoJSON border data, not schematic shapes — spanning the Bahamas in the north to Trinidad in the south, with faint context shapes for the tip of Florida and Venezuela's Paria coast. Drag the slider or press play; each snapshot simplifies a messier reality into the dominant power of the moment.

Borders here are data, not decoration. This is an archipelago: of the seven, only Haiti and the Dominican Republic share actual land, on Hispaniola. Their shared border is the only line on this map — solid whenever they were governed separately, dissolved for the one stretch (1822–1844) when Haiti ruled the whole island. Every other territory here is its own island or island group, with open sea, not a drawn border, between it and its neighbors.

1400

Before Columbus

Real traced coastlines (simplified from public GeoJSON border data), projected onto a single shared grid so every island sits at its correct position relative to the others. Faint gray-gold shapes near the Bahamas and Trinidad are the southern tip of Florida and Venezuela's Paria coast — context only, not tracked regions.

Try: watch the Haiti–Dominican Republic line vanish exactly once, between 1822 and 1844, when Haiti's President Boyer ruled the whole island — then watch it snap back solid the moment Duarte's movement declares independence in 1844. Every other line on this map is sea, not a border, the entire time: none of the other six territories ever shared land with a neighbor, so no other line here can dissolve or resolidify at all.

The same story, as a timeline

Maps are bad at showing when; timelines are bad at showing where. This uses real transition years instead of the nine arbitrary snapshots above — one horizontal band per territory, colored the same way as the map, so you can trace exactly how long each era actually lasted (watch how much longer Barbados stayed continuously British than any other island here).

The same story, nine frames — only the change lights up

Every territory keeps its true color, but anything unchanged from the previous frame fades to low opacity; only the region(s) that actually changed hands stay bold with a solid outline. A caption under each frame spells out exactly what flipped. No slider to operate — scan left to right, top to bottom, and watch the map redraw itself like a flipbook.

About this atlas

This started as a family history project: tracing the flags that flew over the lands our ancestors came from, close enough to paint accurately — correct colors, correct proportions, correct dates. The Caribbean hub is the atlas's first fully insular region: thirteen separate island nations that, with one exception, never shared a land border with each other at all. The interactive map below traces the first seven in detail; the six Eastern Caribbean ministates above are profiled but not yet mapped.

Every country page (linked above, not yet built) will carry its own timeline of flags with paint-ready color specs and a per-era location map. Colors are close historical approximations; pre-19th-century swatches especially are informed reconstructions, not official specifications, and are labeled as such throughout. The regional map above simplifies five centuries of messy, overlapping, disputed control into nine snapshots — useful for orientation, not a substitute for the detail each country's own page will eventually carry.

More of the atlas

This hub is one region in a larger set. See the other phases here:

Flags Atlas indexSearch every country and hub Iberia hubSpain and Portugal, the colonizing crown Levant hubFour countries, Ottoman centuries, 1948