The region known as the British West Indies included British Guiana on the South American mainland, British Honduras in Central America, Bermuda, The Bahamas, and Jamaica, along with its former dependencies of the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands. It also included the Eastern Caribbean territories of Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, the Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands.
From the early 19th century to the later 20th century, the region generally used sterling coinage, although there was quite widespread usage of mixed sterling and dollar accounts. In the later 20th century there was a move towards dollar accounts in all the territories, in conjunction with the introduction of decimal fractional coinage.
Queen Anne's proclamation of 1704 introduced the gold standard to the British West Indies, putting the West Indies about two hundred years ahead of the East Indies in that respect. Nevertheless, silver pieces of eight continued to form an important portion of the circulating coinage until the great silver devaluation of 1873. In addition to the Spanish dollars and gold doubloons, the British government coined 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16 fractional "Anchor dollars" in 1822, for use in Mauritius and the British West Indies, but not including Jamaica.