Definition
The word "Caribbean" has multiple uses. Its principal ones are geographical and political. The Caribbean can also be expanded to include territories with strong cultural and historical connections to slavery, European colonisation and the plantation system.
- The United Nations geoscheme for the Americas accords the Caribbean as a distinct region within The Americas.
- Physiographically, the Caribbean region is mainly a chain of islands surrounding the Caribbean Sea. To the north, the region is bordered by the Gulf of Mexico, the Straits of Florida, and the Northern Atlantic Ocean, which lies to the east and northeast. To the south, lies the coastline of the continent of South America
- Politically, the "Caribbean" may be centred on socio-economic groupings found in the region. For example, the block known as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) contains the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, the Republic of Suriname in South America, and Belize in Central America as full members. Bermuda and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are in the Atlantic Ocean are associate members of the Caribbean Community—as is the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, which is a full member of the Caribbean Community.
- Alternatively, the organisation called the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) consists of almost every nation in the surrounding regions that lie on the Caribbean, plus El Salvador, which lies solely on the Pacific Ocean. According to the ACS, the total population of its member states is 227 million people.
Read more about this topic: Caribbean People
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“The physicians say, they are not materialists; but they are:MSpirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness: O so thin!—But the definition of spiritual should be, that which is its own evidence. What notions do they attach to love! what to religion! One would not willingly pronounce these words in their hearing, and give them the occasion to profane them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Scientific method is the way to truth, but it affords, even in
principle, no unique definition of truth. Any so-called pragmatic
definition of truth is doomed to failure equally.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“It is very hard to give a just definition of love. The most we can say of it is this: that in the soul, it is a desire to rule; in the spirit, it is a sympathy; and in the body, it is but a hidden and subtle desire to possess—after many mysteries—what one loves.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)