Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States the Caribbean Community. OECS currently has ten Eastern Caribbean members, which together form a near-continuous archipelago across the Leeward Islands and Windward Islands. Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands and Martinique are only associate members of OECS. Diplomatic missions of the OECS do not represent the associate members. For all other purposes, associate members are treated as equals of full members. Six of the members were formerly colonies of the United Kingdom. Three others, Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, and Montserrat remain overseas territories of the UK while Martinique, is a part of the French Republic as an overseas department and
Culture of Martinique to the newly formed (1664) Compagnie des Indes occidentales. Dominica is a former French and British colony in the Eastern Caribbean, located about halfway between the French islands of Guadeloupe (to the north) and Martinique (to the south). Christopher Columbus named the island after the day of the week on which he spotted it, a Sunday ("domingo" in Latin), 3 November 1493. In the hundred years after Columbus's landing, Dominica remained isolated. At the time it was inhabited by the Island Caribs, or Kalinago people, and over time more settled there after being driven from surrounding islands, as European powers