This study presents the movement from an oral to a literate culture in the West Indies with the English language as central to this movement. The period examined, from the start of the first English settlement in the islands up to the time of Emancipation, was the period which established the foundations of West Indian society. The study relates the movement towards a literate culture to the development of methods of communication in the plantation slave society, to general literary and intellectual development, and to the expansion of formal education. Literacy in English is regarded as a barometer of social development because the English language was sustained internally and externally as the language of those who ruled and, contrary to fundamental notions associated with the power of literacy, it maintained privilege within certain sectors of the society. There is no other study which provides the interdisciplinary approach of this work in accounting for the development of literate culture in the West Indies.