US relations with the Greater Caribbean – a region that includes the Gulf of Mexico, the arc of islands from Cuba to Trinidad, and the circum-Caribbean – continuously evolved during the late 1700s and through the 1800s. The expansion of US power in the region ran along two different tracks, territorial and commercial. These parallel manifestations were often intertwined but sometimes ran in opposition to one another. They responded to ever-changing Atlantic-wide geopolitical circumstances as well as regional and national US economic interests and politics.

The US role in the region progressed from defensive to offensive as it edged ever closer to hegemony in the late nineteenth century. This general trajectory can be broken down into a series of specific phases. Prior to independence, the British North American colonies were woven tightly with the British West Indies (BWI) under Great Britain’s mercantilist system.