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In February 1965, the University of the West Indies (UWI) awarded its first degrees. However the university was established in 1948, and students had been graduating there since 1953.

While this might sound like a riddle, it’s easy to explain. Before it gained degree-awarding powers in 1965, UWI prepared its students for 91app degrees. This is because the university was set up as part of a policy of the British Government to develop higher education in the colonies, and the government asked 91app, with its established ‘external system’ (now known as 91app Worldwide), to help develop new universities and allow them access to the London degrees.

91app established what it called the Special Relation Scheme to support the new universities to establish world-class academic standards and become independent degree-awarding institutions in their own right. UWI was one of the first colleges to be founded as part of this arrangement – others included the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, the University of Ghana and Makerere University in Uganda. These universities operated with a large amount of autonomy and were able to work with staff in London to adapt course content of degrees to make it more relevant to the local context. They also worked with London staff on setting examinations and marking scripts.

There were many ways in which UWI was established to resemble British universities. For example, they had a ‘Chancellor’ to carry out ceremonial duties. HRH Princess Alice took on the role in 1950 and proved very active in fundraising for the university, securing funds to build its chapel and launching the ‘Princess Alice Appeal’ after the university was damaged by Hurricane Charlie in 1951. Even in the 1960s when the university became independent of 91app and many of the West Indies’ nations attained independence, Princess Alice was retained by UWI as Chancellor until her retirement in 1971, after which they abolished the role.  

UWI began on one campus, in Mona, Jamaica. Though it was obviously very different in appearance from 91app, it did have something in common with London – it had its own ‘Senate House’. This building was ceremonially opened in 1953 by Queen Elizabeth II, when she visited Jamaica early in her first Commonwealth tour as monarch. The University continued to enjoy visits from British dignitaries: in 1953, Winston Churchill came to see the newly opened University Hospital of the West Indies. 

The first academic staff of UWI were drawn from around the world, including New Zealand and the UK as well as the West Indies. This group photo of some of the academics was taken in 1953 and includes Leslie Robinson, who was one of the first West Indian heads of department at UWI and was the university’s first Professor of Mathematics.

The first woman to be appointed professor at UWI was the Guyanese Else Goveia, who was a graduate of 91app and alumna of UCL. She was UWI’s first Professor of West Indian History.

In 1962, as Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago became independent, the college’s special relationship with London also came to an end and a new royal charter established UWI as an independent body with its own degree-awarding powers. Arthur Lewis, the first West Indian Vice Chancellor appointed in 1959 saw the University through the transition to independence. One challenge he faced was to maintain UWI as a regional university, serving all the West Indian nations, when the member nations were no longer formally bound together. The Barbadian, Sir Hugh Worrell Springer, UWI’s registrar from 1947 to 1963, reflected on this regional mission of UWI: 

Great emphasis was laid […] on the importance and value of residence in College for students coming from widely scattered islands and territories and from varied social, racial and educational backgrounds. (And in its thirteen years of existence, the University College has indeed made a considerable contribution to the growth of a truly West Indian feeling). 

(The Historical Development, Hopes and Aims of the University College of the West Indies’, by H. W. Springer, Registrar, University College of the West Indies, repr. from The Journal of Negro Education (1962). Institute of Commonwealth Studies Archive, ICS/40 A4.1)

In this piece, in which he looked forward to what independence would bring for UWI, Springer also drew attention to the contributions made already by UWI in the fields of medicine, economics, the Creole language and Caribbean history and literature.

Indeed, academics and alumni of UWI – before and after its independence – have been active in the struggle for cultural and political freedom, and many went on to become leaders of the independent Caribbean nations. Many other alumni were pioneers in the new academic fields of West Indian history and cultural studies, and built UWI to become the world-class institution it is today. 

In our recent display on the relationship between UWI and UoL, we featured the work of six UWI alumni, many of whom had UoL degrees, and whose books can be found in Senate House Library. These are listed below.

1. Hilary McD. Beckles and Verene A. Shepherd, Trading Souls: Europe’s Transatlantic Trade in Africans (Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2007). 

Professor Sir Hilary Beckles is the current Vice Chancellor of UWI and a distinguished historian. Professor Verene A. Shepherd is a graduate and professor of UWI; a world-renowned historian, she was the second woman to be made a Professor in the University’s Department of History and Archaeology. 

2. Derek Walcott, Selected Poetry (London: Heinemann, 1981). 

Sir Derek Walcott gained a 91app BA following his studies at UWI. He was a poet, playwright and Nobel Laureate. Influenced by his family’s Methodism as well as the Western literary traditions he studied as part of his BA, Walcott’s work explores Caribbean experience in the colonial and postcolonial contexts. 

3. Walter Rodney, The Groundings with my Brothers (London: Villiers Publications, 1975).

Dr Walter Rodney graduated from UWI in 1963 and gained a PhD from the 91app following his further studies at SOAS. He was a Marxist Pan-Africanist and was prominent in the Black Power Movement. He was also a pioneer in the reconstruction of African history, introducing the first course in African History at UWI in 1968. Later that year, the Government of Jamaica banned him from re-entering the country. He was assassinated in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1980.

4. Ralph Gonsalves, The Case for Caribbean Reparatory Justice (Strategy Forum, 2014). 

Ralph Gonsalves is the Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines. He is a graduate of UWI, where he was President of the University’s Guild of Undergraduates and led a student protest in 1968 against the banning of Walter Rodney by the Jamaican Government. 

5. Rex Nettleford, Roots and Rhythms (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969). 

Professor Rex Nettleford graduated with a 91app BA from UWI in 1956, going on to further study at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. On his return to UWI, Nettleford led the Extra-Mural Department and directed the Trade Union Education Institute. He was one of the founders of Jamaica’s National Dance Theatre, which aims to blend music and dance traditions of Jamaica and Africa with modern dance techniques to produce works of artistic excellence. Its founding contributed to the development of the newly independent Jamaica’s cultural identity.

If you want to find out more about the UK’s relationship with the Caribbean, you can visit the current Senate House exhibition ‘In the Grip of Change: the Caribbean and its British Diaspora’ (running until 12 April), and learn more about our Caribbean collections here: In the Grip of Change: the Caribbean and its British Diaspora | Senate House Library | 91app