Overview
Aside from its Portuguese name, very little Latin influence remains on Barbados. Its position in the Windwards made the island relatively safe from invasion, leaving British culture to incubate here for nearly 400 years. The chief example of this is the Bajan national sport, if not the national obsession: cricket. On a per capita basis, Bajans boast more world-class cricket players than any other nation. One of the game’s best ever all-rounders was Barbados native Garfield Sobers, who was knighted in 1975. Another local cricket hero, Sir Frank Worrell, appears on the face of Barbados’ five-dollar bill.
Despite the British influence, West Indian culture is strong in family life, food and music. Calypso artist the Mighty Gabby, whose songs on cultural identity and political protest speak for emerging black pride throughout the Caribbean, is from Barbados. It’s not really surprising that Barbados is fertile ground for such voices since it still suffers from a history of racial segregation and discrimination by the white minority against the black majority.
Pre 20th Century History
The original inhabitants of Barbados were Arawak Indians, who were driven off the island around 1200 AD by invading Carib Indians from Venezuela. The Caribs themselves abandoned Barbados around the time the first Europeans sailed into the region.
Portuguese explorer Pedro a Campos stopped on Barbados in 1536 en route to Brazil. Though he had no interest in settling the island, it’s thought that he introduced pigs to Barbados with the intention of using them as a food source on return voyages. It was Campos who named the island Los Barbados (’the bearded ones’), presumably after the island’s fig trees, whose long, hanging aerial roots have a beard-like resemblance.
Captain John Powell landed on Barbados in 1625 and claimed the uninhabited island for England. Two years later, his brother Captain Henry Powell landed with a party of 80 settlers and 10 slaves. The group established the island’s first European settlement, Jamestown, on the western coast at what is now Holetown. More settlers followed in their wake and by the end of 1628 the colony’s population had grown to 2000.
Within a few years the colonists had cleared much of the native forest and planted tobacco and cotton. They replanted their fields with sugar in the 1640s. To meet the labour demands of the new crop, planters who had previously relied upon indentured servants began to import large numbers of African slaves. Their estates, the first large sugar plantations in the Caribbean, proved immensely profitable, and by the mid-17th century the planters and merchants were thriving.
In 1639, island freeholders formed a Legislative Assembly, only the second such parliament established in a British colony (Bermuda was the first). Barbados was loyal to the Crown during Britain’s civil wars and, following the beheading of King Charles I in 1649, Oliver Cromwell dispatched a force to establish his authority over Barbados. The invading fleet arrived in 1651 and by the following year Barbados had surrendered and signed the Articles of Capitulation, which formed the basis for the Charter of Barbados. The charter guaranteed government by a governor and a freely elected assembly, as well as freedom from taxation without local consent. When the British Crown was restored in 1660, this charter ironically provided Barbados with a greater measure of independence from the English monarchy than that of other British colonies.
The sugar industry continued to boom into the next century, even after abolition. Emancipation came in 1834 but failed to solve the poor living conditions of black islanders. Virtually all the island’s arable land remained in the hands of large plantation owners, and most former slaves had few options other than to stay on the plantations. Those who did leave often ended up in shanty towns.
Modern History
During the economic depression of the 1930s, unemployment shot upwards, living conditions deteriorated and street riots broke out. As a consequence, the British Colonial Welfare and Development Office was established to provide sizeable sums for Barbados and other Caribbean colonies. To counter growing political unrest, the British reluctantly gave black reformers a role in the political process. One of those reformers, Grantley Adams, became the first premier of Barbados and was eventually knighted by the queen.
Barbados gained internal self-government in 1961 and became an independent nation five years later. As the sugar industry declined after WWII, tourism steadily increased its share of the island’s economy. By the early 1990s it was the largest sector, and the sugar industry was in receivership.
Recent History
Barbados in recent times has been a peaceful kind of place that doesn’t make too many waves, so to speak. International incidents tend to be rather humble affairs - at least superficially - as was the case in December 2001, when the PM threatened trade retaliation when Trinidad arrested two fishermen. A similar flare-up in February 2004 caused Barbados to take the case to a UN-backed tribunal. Barbados, like many of its neighbours, was included on an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) list of 35 countries accused of being uncooperative tax havens. A clean-up of its banking system led to its removal from the list in 2002.