<P> The struggle between the northern Europeans and the Spanish spread southward in the mid to late seventeenth century, as English, Dutch, French and Spanish colonists, and in many cases their slaves from Africa first entered and then occupied the coast of The Guianas (which fell to the French, English and Dutch) and the Orinoco valley, which fell to the Spanish . The Dutch, allied with the Caribs of the Orinoco would eventually carry the struggles deep into South America, first along the Orinoco and then along the northern reaches of the Amazon . </P> <P> Since no European country had occupied much of Central America, gradually the English of Jamaica established alliances with the Miskito Kingdom of modern - day Nicaragua and Honduras, and then began logging on the coast of modern - day Belize . These interconnected commercial and diplomatic relations made up the Western Caribbean Zone which was in place in the early eighteenth century . In the Miskito Kingdom, the rise to power of the Miskito - Zambos, who originated in the survivors of a rebellion aboard a slave ship in the 1640s and the introduction of African slaves by British settlers within the Miskito area and in Belize British Honduras also transformed this area into one with a high percentage of persons of African descent as was found in most of the rest of the Caribbean . </P> <P> From the 17th through the 19th century, the European colonial territories of the West Indies were the French West Indies, British West Indies, the Danish West Indies, the Netherlands Antilles (Dutch West Indies), and the Spanish West Indies . </P> <P> In 1916, Denmark sold the Danish West Indies to the United States for US $25 million in gold, per the Treaty of the Danish West Indies . The Danish West Indies became an insular area of the US, called the United States Virgin Islands . </P>

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