Between 1662 and 1867, some 37 percent of all Africans imported into the killing fields of the Americas arrived in that part of the Caribbean in which the English and French languages would achieve qualified dominance (transformed as they were by African inflection, syntax, and vocabulary), a figure that towers above the 10 percent estimate for the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. In general, there is more specific and descriptive information on Muslims in the anglophone sector, necessitating a demographically driven argument for the presence of Muslims under French domination. Data of an anecdotal nature can found for numerous locations throughout the region, but truly discernible patterns, about which some analysis can be sustained, are at this stage of the research visible only for the islands of Jamaica, Trinidad, and Saint Domingue. These three sites are therefore taken in that order to determine the quality and implications of an Islamic presence in the Antilles (see Map 3).

It is probable that the English-speaking Caribbean received some 80 percent of all Africans transported by British carriers. It therefore stands to reason that the importation patterns for the whole of the British trade are especially reflective of the situation in the West Indies. Between 1700 and 1807, Senegambia and Sierra Leone, the regions of origin out of which most Muslims would have come, supplied 6.2 percent and 15.5 percent of the total British trade, respectively.