Weather Politics and the Making of International Order: Hurricanes in the Rise and Fall of the West Indies Federation

How is global weather entangled with the construction of international order? This article explores the history of the West Indies Federation with reference to the hurricanes that regularly strike the Caribbean. Recurrent extreme weather events in this region, we show, contributed to why the Federal project emerged, shaped its short life, and are essential to understanding how the Federal vision failed to create a lasting regional order. The past and present international relations of the Caribbean cannot be understood without reference to the relationalities that we term in this article “weather politics.” This revisionist historical argument sheds light on the role of colonial history in shaping Caribbean vulnerability to climate change impacts today, by revealing how international order formation in the Caribbean was entangled with the weather.