The West Indies includes three islands, namely the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles and the Bahamas. Caribbean Islands is not a proper term, generally refers to the islands in the Caribbean Sea, located between the South American continent, the Central American isthmus and the big and small Antilles. Therefore, the Caribbean Islands should only include the Greater Antilles and the Lesser Antilles, but not the Bahamas. So the West Indies include the Caribbean Islands, and the Bahamas has one more than the Caribbean Islands. The following is a detailed introduction:

The West Indies lies between the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. The Atlantic Ocean lies south of the Florida Peninsula, east of the Isthmus of Central America and north of the South American continent. It includes three arc islands, the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles and the Bahamas. From Cape San Antonio at the western end of Cuba Island to Aruba Island in the northern waters of Venezuela, it extends eastward in an arc of more than 4,700 kilometers, covering an area of 235,000 square kilometers. * * * There are more than 65,438+0,200 islands and countless coral reefs and atolls. 1492, Columbus crossed the Atlantic for the first time and sailed to Bahamas, Haiti and Cuba. He mistakenly thought it was an island near India, and later called it the West Indies because it was located in the Western Hemisphere.

The Caribbean Sea lies between the South American continent, the Central American isthmus and the large and small Antilles. Named after the indigenous Caribbean Indians. The Yucatan Strait in the northwest is connected with the Gulf of Mexico, and the north and east are connected with the Atlantic Ocean through the Windward Strait, which is a series of straits between mona passage and the big and small Antilles. The longest thing is 2800 kilometers, and the widest from north to south is 1400 kilometers, covering an area of 2.754 million square kilometers. With an average water depth of 249 1m and a maximum water depth of 7,680m, it is one of the deepest continental seas in the world.

The independent countries of the Caribbean islands are:

Greater Antilles: Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica.

Lesser Antilles: Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Dominica.

Areas belonging to colonial countries: Cayman Islands (United Kingdom), Virgin Islands (United States), Virgin Islands (United States), Anguilla (United Kingdom), Sint Maarten (France, Netherlands), Guadeloupe (France) and Martinique (France).

There are also the Netherlands Antilles and Puerto Rico, a free union of the United States. The two regions practice internal autonomy.