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The Antilles (the same in French; Antillas in Spanish; Antillen in Dutch) refers to the islands forming the greater part of the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea. The Antilles are divided into two major groups: the "Greater Antilles" to the north including the larger islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Puerto Rico; and the smaller "Lesser Antilles" on the southeast — comprising the northerly Leeward Islands, the southeasterly Windward Islands, and the Leeward Antilles just north of Venezuela. The Bahamas, though part of the West Indies, are generally not included among the Antillean islands.^[1]

Geographically, the Antilles are generally considered part of North America. Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico – due to the prevalence of Spanish – are included in Latin America.

In terms of geology, the Greater Antilles are made up of continental rock, as distinct from the Lesser Antilles, which are mostly young volcanic or coral islands.

Contents 1 Background 2 Greater Antilles 3 Lesser Antilles 4 Footnotes 5 References

The word Antilles originated in the period before the European conquest of the New World — Antilia being one of those mysterious lands which figured on the medieval charts, sometimes as an archipelago, sometimes as continuous land of greater or lesser extent, its location fluctuating in mid-ocean between the Canary Islands and India.

After the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus's expedition in what was later called the West Indies, the European powers realized that the dispersed lands comprised an extensive archipelago enclosing the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Thereafter, the term Antilles was commonly assigned to the formation, and "Sea of the Antilles" became a common alternate name for the Caribbean Sea in various European languages.

Main article: Greater Antilles.

• Cuba
• Hispaniola
  • Dominican Republic
  • Haiti
• Jamaica
• Puerto Rico (U.S. commonwealth)
• Cayman Islands (geographical zone under Cuba)

Main article: Lesser Antilles; also see: Leeward Antilles.

• Anguilla (Br.)
• Antigua and Barbuda
• Aruba (Neth.)
• Barbados
• Bonaire (Neth. Ant.)
• British Virgin Islands
• Curaçao (Neth. Ant.)
• Dominica
• Grenada
• Guadeloupe (Fr.)
• Martinique (Fr.)
• Montserrat (Br.)
• Netherlands Antilles (Neth.)
• Redonda (part of Antigua and Barbuda)
• Saba (Neth. Ant.)
• Saint Barthélemy (Fr.)
• Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Saint Lucia
• Saint Martin (Fr.)/ Sint Maarten (Neth. Ant.)
• Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
• Saint Eustatius (a.k.a. "Statia") (Neth. Ant.)
• Trinidad and Tobago
• U.S. Virgin Islands

1. ^ Some sources, such as Encarta in Spanish, consider the Bahamas part of the Antilles. [1] (Spanish)

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.