The US battleship Maine is blown up in Havana harbour, sparking off the Spanish-American War

Theodore Roosevelt fights against the Spanish in Cuba with a volunteer regiment of cavalry, the Rough Riders

In the Treaty of Paris, ending the Spanish-American War, Spain cedes Puerto Rico and Cuba to the USA

Puerto Ricans are granted limited democracy in a bill of rigfhts introduced after two years of US military occupation

Cuba becomes independent after three years of US military rule, with certain restrictions imposed by the Platt Amendment of 1901

Cuba is forced to accept a permanent US military presence in Guantanamo Bay

President Taft sends US marines to Cuba because of political unrest in the island

Woodrow Wilson sends US marines to take control in Haiti after a spate of political assassinations

Haiti becomes a US protectorate, under the terms of a treaty signed in the previous year

Woodrow Wilson sends the marines to maintain order when the Dominican Republic slips towards civil war

The Jones Act gives Puerto Ricans US citizenship and a popularly elected Senate and House of Representatives

Caribbean-born author Jean Rhys publishes her first novel, Postures, based on her affair with the writer Ford Madox Ford

Rafael Trujillo establishes a dictatorship in the Dominican Republic that will last for 30 years

The steel-band tradition begins to develop in Trinidad, with adapted metal objects taking the place of traditional skin drums

The Rastafarian cult evolves in Jamaica, viewing Ras Tafari, the emperor of Ethiopia, as the black Messiah

Fulgencio Batista, as army chief of staff, begins a long career running the affairs of Cuba

The US military government is finally withdrawn from Haiti after nineteen years

The British government advertises in Jamaica for people to come and work in Britain

The first West Indian immigrants to Britain arive from Jamaica on the Empire Windrush

Ernest Hemingway publishes The Old Man and the Sea, about an epic struggle between an aged Cuban fisherman and a gigantic marlin

Communist activist Fidel Castro returns from Mexico to Cuba to organize guerrilla warfare against the Batista regime

Barbadian cricketer Garfield Sobers, playing in Kingston, Jamaica, against Pakistan, makes a record Test score of 365 not out

A country doctor, François Duvalier, is elected president of Haiti on a massive popular vote

Dictator Fulgencio Batista flees from Cuba, leaving Havana open to Fidel Castro and his victorious guerrillas

Fidel Castro begins more than four decades of authoritarian rule in Cuba