Made their own trade and political decisions.
Germany lost World War I. In the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the victorious powers (the United States, Great Britain, France, and other allied states) imposed punitive territorial, military, and economic provisions on defeated Germany. In the west, Germany returned Alsace-Lorraine to France.
The English, Dutch and French forces saw that the Caribbean islands where valuable and those European powers started to fight for it, when the English started to prevail Spain was forced to retreat and the consequences where that Spain lost one of its valuable land but also it lost soldiers during the fights it had with the other powers.
