What if Washington wanted one of our islands?

One Caribbean Nation

Professor Justin Robinson

       THE UNFINISHED MEANING OF EMANCIPATION IN 2026 

By Professor Justin Robinson

(The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of this publication.)

Caribbean people can't wait for summer. Long school and university vacations, Vincy Mas, Lucian Mas, Antigua Carnival, Kadooment, Spice Mas, beach days and overseas shopping. Many hardly notice that August 1 is Emancipation Day and quietly grumble: who are these mad people talking about a season of Emancipation? Slavery and colonialism went together as the imperial powers, England, France, Holland and Spain in the main, decided the fates of people resident in these idyllic Caribbean islands.

This season of Emancipation, I intrude on your vacation time to ask you to examine the imperial habits that survived Emancipation. I want you to consider a crazy-sounding question. What if, like Greenland, Washington decided that one of our islands was indispensable as a military base? The old and new imperial powers always claimed the right to decide who is permitted to be free, who can own land, the fate of nations and whose homes can be sacrificed when a great power declares them strategically necessary.

If you think my question is crazy, just ask the people of the Chagos Archipelago.

In February 2026, President Donald Trump posted six capitalised words on his Truth Social platform: "DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA!" Diego Garcia is a military base in the Chagos Archipelago, which is just off Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Chagos is a place Caribbean people will recognise in an instant. Immediately. Enslaved Africans were taken to its coconut plantations and were later joined by indentured labourers from India. They are not strangers to us; they are an Afro-Asian Creole plantation people, our cousins across an ocean.

In the 1960s, Washington identified the Chagos Islands as an ideal place for a military base. In 1965, three years before Mauritius became independent, Britain detached the Chagos Archipelago and created the "British Indian Ocean Territory" and then made the islands available for a United States military facility. The United States wanted an empty land, so between 1968 and 1973, Britain made sure it got an empty land as the entire Chagossian population, commonly estimated at roughly 1 500 to 2 000 people, was relocated to Mauritius and Seychelles, where many entered lives of severe poverty.

During the forced deportation of the Chagossians in the late 1960s and early 1970s, British colonial authorities, acting under a joint plan with the US, rounded up and killed the islanders' pet dogs. The animals were brutally gassed with exhaust fumes or shot to intimidate the residents into leaving.

In 1966, senior Foreign Office official Denis Greenhill wrote, "Along with the birds, would go some few Tarzans or Men Fridays."

This was Britain's imperial civil service describing British subjects whose removal Britain was arranging in 1966, the same year Barbados became independent. What would our fate have been if Barbados had been identified as an ideal place for a military base and a land with no people was wanted in 1966? If you wanted a reason for a season to reflect on Emancipation, the Chagos affair provides a clear one, as it demonstrates that the imperial instincts and racial prejudice did not retire with Emancipation and Independence. Lloyd Best taught us that the plantation is not merely a place but a structure. As Best predicted, on Chagos, the structure endured; only the crop changed, from copra to strategic position.

With the land free of the dispensable Creoles, the United States and Britain built a major military installation from which aircraft supported wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and rendition flights passed through the territory after years in which London denied that they had. The land was useful, so the people had to go, and the Chagossians became another sordid chapter in what imperial powers make of racialised people lacking military might. They are treated as collateral damage in the pursuit of profits, strategic necessity or whatever is important to imperial powers.

In the finest tradition of colonised people, the Chagossians fought for their rights and challenged Britain in its courts, while Mauritius carried the issue to the international system.

In 2019, the International Court of Justice concluded that the decolonisation of Mauritius had not been lawfully completed and that Britain should end its administration of Chagos as rapidly as possible. The United Nations General Assembly endorsed that opinion by 116 votes to six.

Under mounting legal and diplomatic pressure, the United Kingdom and Mauritius signed a treaty in May 2025. The treaty recognised Mauritian sovereignty over the whole archipelago while allowing Britain to exercise authority over Diego Garcia for an initial 99 years. The British government put the average annual cost at £101 million and the discounted net present value at £3.4 billion. Mauritius could arrange Chagossian resettlement on the outer islands, but not on Diego Garcia. The Chagossians who wanted to could not go home, as their homeland was still too strategically important.

The President of the United States denounced the agreement as weakness and demanded that Britain retain the territory. Britain first defended the treaty and then yielded.

The implementing legislation made no further progress after Parliament was prorogued in April 2026, and the agreement remains unratified. President Trump's social media post had no force in British law, yet London, ever more dependent on the USA in a post-Brexit world, treated it as a veto.

If you ask why not just move on and why celebrate a season of Emancipation, I say to you that Emancipation ended the legal ownership of our bodies, but it did not end the imperial assumption that Black and brown bodies, communities and territories could be rearranged for the convenience of others.

The Chagossians are still waiting to go home. What if Washington wanted one of our islands? Reflect on this during this season of Emancipation. Our answer cannot be entrusted to the goodwill of the empire.

Professor Justin Robinson is an economist and Pro Vice- Chancellor of the Board of Undergraduate Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus.

Barbados Today Tuesday, August 18th.