History of Barbados
Physical:
Barbados is the easternmost island in the Caribbean, situated a good hundred miles
away from the rest of the chain. Coral stone constitutes the island's base rather
than volcanic activity, and the land is relatively flat: the tallest point is only
1,100 feet above sea level. The land is fourteen miles wide and twenty-one miles
long. The name comes from the Portuguese reference to the island, "Los
Barbados," which means "the bearded ones." Most likely, the
name came from the bearded fig trees lining the coast.
Amerindians:
The first settlers on Barbados arrived around 400 BC when the Arawaks, a group of
peaceful hunter-gatherers, set up villages after island-hopping through the
Caribbean. The more aggressive Caribs (another tribe of hunter-gatherers)
annihilated the Arawaks around 1200 AD and inhabited the island. But when the first
English colonists landed on the island, the only welcome they received was from a herd of
Portuguese hogs. Scholars theorize that the Carib Indians died of an epidemic, or
else that the Spanish settlers gathered them off the island and pressed them into
slavery. Despite their absence, the Amerindians' influence remains on the island
through their artifacts and the sounds of modern language. For example, the
Amerindian huracan translates to hurricane and guayaba has evolved into
guava.
English Settlement:
When Spain and Portugal came through the Caribbean, they either overlooked the flat
island of Barbados or they bypassed it. But in 1625, Captain John Powell landed near
modern-day Holetown to claim Barbados for England in the name of King James I. The
settlement started in earnest on Feb. 17, 1627 when 80 English settlers and 10 African
slaves made their home on the west coast.
Many of the early settlers were the misfits of English
society: gamblers, kidnappers, political refugees, etc. Younger or second sons
of wealthy English families also came to Barbados to claim land, money, and a chance at
starting a life of their own. Often, they worked as indentured servants for two to
ten years.
Sir William Courteen, a
London merchant, funded the initial settlement with £10,000. The first settlers
kept modest lives. They planted crops such as tobacco, cotton, ginger, and indigo,
but they also raised their own food. Indentured servants performed most of the work
rather than slaves.
The Earl of Carlisle (whose
name is memorialized in Carlisle Bay) succeeded Courteen when he convinced James I to
grant him control of the Caribbean. Carlisle was less humanitarian than Courteen,
and demanded more of the island's profits for his own pockets. He also sent his own
group of settlers to the southern end of Barbados, where they established the city of
Bridgetown, carving it out of the swampy land they found. But Carlisle's demands for
more of the colonists' profits sapped the island of the wealth and strength it needed, and
the 1630's became known as "the starving time."
Sugar Cane:
In 1637, a Dutchman, Pieter Blower, brought sugar cane to Barbados. The
colonists initially used the cane for making rum, but they began to refine the juice into
crystallized sugar by 1642. The sugar industry spread across the entire island,
transforming every piece of arable land from jungle to field.
The plantation owners also imported more African slaves to work on
the plantations, and the black:white ratios soared. Not only were more Africans
brought onto the island, but the number of small-time white planters decreased
dramatically as they found they couldn't compete with the large plantation owners.
Home Rule and Slavery:
Barbados was always closely tied to her mother country--so closely, in fact, that she
was known by various nicknames such as "Little England" and
"Bimshire." Despite these close ties, the islanders began to argue for
home rule, but their political sway remained small.
Slave rebellions also tended to be less serious than on
other
Caribbean islands because Barbados maintained a heavy police force and
because there was nowhere to
run. Unlike Jamaica, which still had forests, almost all of Barbados's land had been
cultivated to optimize sugar output.
Rebellions did transpire in the late 1600's, but the nature
of their protest changed as the 1700's evolved. The Africans slowly became
native-born or creolized rather than imported. The plantation owners believed that
the creolized slaves were more "trainable" than the newly imported Africans, and
they gave the island-born slaves more liberties as a result.
British Parliament officially abolished the slave trade in
1807. To guard against illegal importation, Parliament required the Barbadian
planters to register their slaves. The plantation owners were furious: they
believed the bill threatened their self-government.
When slaves heard rumors about the controversy, they misinterpreted
the events and thought the uproar was over the question of freeing them. A
slave revolt, commonly known as Bussa's Rebellion,
erupted in 1816 when the slaves' living conditions were better than ever. The
revolters--free mulattos and slaves--had met at weekend dances for months to plan.
They set fire to cane fields in St. Peter the night of April 14, 1816. Police and
plantation owners stopped the revolt only after one-fifth of the island's sugar crop had
been destroyed. 176 slaves died in the uprising, and another 214 were executed.
Because of the revolt, the British Parliament granted Barbados the
right to pass its own slave registry bill, a step toward self-rule. Slavery itself
was not abolished until 1834--and, even then, it passed with little fanfare.
"As William Hart Coleridge, an influential abolitionist and Anglican Bishop on
Barbados reported: '800,000 human beings lay down last night as slaves, and rose in the
morning as free as ourselves . . . '" (Wilder 32).
After Emancipation:
For four years after emancipation, the slaves were required to participate in an
apprenticeship program that had largely tied the freed slaves to the plantations where
they once worked for free. When the apprenticeship program ended on August 1, 1838,
the newly-freed Bajans celebrated in the streets. The transition to complete
emancipation was simple and bloodless, though the problems with a small wealthy leadership
class and a large black labor force would take over a century to resolve.
Certain laws kept the emancipated slaves fairly quiet, docile, and
immobile, but not everyone simply accepted the events. Samuel Jackson Prescod, son of a slave mother and
white father, championed the cause of freedom, justice, and equality. He became the
first non-white member of Barbados's Parliament in 1843. He also helped found the
Liberal Party, whose following included small landowners, businessmen, and mulatto and
black clerks.
In 1878, when faced with the option of joining a Confederation to
unite the British Colonies in the Caribbean, Barbadians refused. Primarily, they
said they didn't want to lose the chance at self-rule; but they also refused because they
worried that the black population would emigrate away, and that the island's economy would
crumble as a result.
Many black Bajans did leave, in fact, to help build the Panama Canal
between 1850 and 1914. Around this time, Barbados's economy did face collapse as
they competed with other countries in the sugar industry.
In response to the hard times, new political movements
evolved. Dr. Charles Duncan O'Neale,
for instance, championed the need to improve workers' conditions. In 1924, O'Neale
founded the Democratic League, a mass-based, radical, political force. In 1938, the
Barbados Labour Party evolved. Marcus Garvey also represented a strong figure that
gave Bajans the courage to fight for more equality.
In 1937, the anger and frustration erupted into riots sparked by Clement Payne's influence. Payne advocated the
formation of trade unions by speaking publicly in Bridgetown. He inspired the Bajans
to such depths of passion that the authorities deported him July 26, 1937. But
crowds of Bajans gathered to protest his deportation. The riots that broke out
lasted three days, starting in towns and spreading quickly to rural areas (see especially
George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin). The anger and frustration at a
government ruled by such a small percentage of the population was finally beginning to
erupt.
Various politicians worked to equalize the black and white
Bajans. Grantley Adams became a leader and
spokesmen for a mass-movement from 1938-1945. He helped found the Barbados Labour
Party and demanded fair labour laws. Slowly, the island prepared for independence.
The question of confederation
with the rest of the Caribbean islands arose again, and Adams represented Barbados in the
coalition. But the movement never gained enough momentum, and it dissolved in
1962--only four years after it began.
Earl Walton Barrow succeeded
Adams in the Barbadian government as Prime Minister. Barrow supported a very liberal
party and put the finishing touches on preparing the island for independence, which came
November 30, 1966. Again, the transition to new status proceeded smoothly.
Despite independence, the island remained very British and
conservative in style for several decades. But Barbados has been working at
preserving its own unique culture in the past decade or so (starting mid-1980's).
One aspect of that preservation can be seen in the Bajans' enthusiasm for the Crop Over
Festival. Crop Over began during the days of plantation society as a way to
celebrate the end of the sugar cane harvest. The celebration restarted in the
1970's, and the Natural Cultural Foundation has managed it since 1982.
Crop Over also revived the calypso
tradition in Barbados. "The wildly popular calypsonians are now a major force
in Bajan society: they speak for the people, providing social commentary, gentle
protest that grows out of concern for their nation, and a constant source of indigenous
entertainment" (Wilder 47).
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