In 1967, when Britain was shedding the vestiges of its empire, Ronald Webster emerged as the George Washington of the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla — in reverse. He plotted a revolution to embrace the mother country rather than to break with it.

London nation-builders had envisioned an independent federation that would formally join Anguilla in association with two other former island colonies, neighboring St. Kitts and Nevis. But Anguilla wanted to go it alone.

After demanding to be severed from the federation, Mr. Webster, as the island’s leading political figure, did the unthinkable: He all but insisted that Parliament declare Anguilla a British dependency again.

His defiance of the federation — Anguillans actually issued a declaration of independence — prompted a response that could have been lifted from “The Mouse That Roared,” the satirical novel (and the later movie adaptation, which starred Peter Sellers) about a tiny country that declares war on the United States, which had tickled jittery Cold War readers a decade earlier.