The small and vibrant island nation of Barbados recently became the world’s newest republic when it cut its long-standing ties with the British monarchy, while still retaining membership of the Commonwealth of Nations. Ever since Barbados gained independence on 30 November 1966, the British Queen has been Head of State, represented on the island by the Governor-General. At the stroke of midnight on the morning of 30 November 2021, this state of affairs finally came to an end. Dame Sandra Mason, the first President of the new Republic of Barbados, took over as Head of State during a televised open-air ceremony in the capital of Bridgetown. Speaking in front of the assembled crowd in National Heroes Square (formerly Trafalgar Square) in central Bridgetown, Prince Charles then went on to describe the “appalling atrocity of slavery” as something “which forever stains our history”.
Despite the Englishness of the country’s educational and legal systems and a national obsession with cricket, all of which led the island to be nicknamed “Little England”, there is a growing move within Barbados to examine its history in greater depth as well as to seek recompense for the dark and brutal legacy of slavery that has underpinned its creation. As part of this process of recovery and healing, on 4 December 2021 Mia Amor Mottley, Prime Minister of the new Republic, announced plans for a Barbados Heritage District, including the Barbados Archives, a research institute, a museum dedicated to the transatlantic slave trade, and the Newton Enslaved Burial Ground Memorial. This major heritage project is to be designed by the British architect Sir David Adjaye.
Barbados is the easternmost of the Caribbean islands, located at the eastern extremity of the Lesser Antilles chain. The island was once populated by Amerindians (Arawak and Carib), but was mostly uninhabited when “officially discovered” by the Spanish in 1492. It was named Os Barbados (the bearded) by Portuguese sea captain Pedro a Campos in 1536, because of the beard-like appearance of the hanging roots of the native Bearded Fig Tree. Captain John Powell arrived on 4 May 1625 and claimed the island for King James I of England. His younger brother, Captain Henry Powell, then brought 80 English settlers and 10 kidnapped African slaves, who landed on the island’s calm west coast on 17 February 1627 and began colonisation in the name of Charles I.
Tobacco and cotton were initially grown on the island as commercial crops. The tobacco industry did not survive, being wiped out by competition from Virginian tobacco. In the 1640s, the Barbadian planter James Drax visited Recife in Brazil and imported Dutch expertise in sugar cane plantation. During the same decade, Dutch planters and Sephardic Jewish merchants were expelled from northeast Brazil (Bahia and Recife) by the Portuguese and moved to Barbados to help develop the sugar plantation economy. By the mid-1640s, the scene had been set for the Sugar Revolution. Large plantation estates emerged, at the cost of deforestation and widespread soil degradation, as the island moved towards a plantation economy based on sugarcane monoculture. These sugarcane plantations were vertically integrated establishments, complete with mills and factories on site where the sugarcane was processed. Sugar and its by-products molasses and rum thereafter dominated the island’s exports for centuries to come.
The island’s workforce initially consisted of white indentured labourers and servants, drawn from the ranks of convicts, captives, and prisoners of war from England, Scotland, and Ireland. Remnants of this early influx of underprivileged whites can be still seen today among the poor and marginalised Red Leg community. The plantations were owned by a chosen few English elites, who came to control the legal and political institutions on the island. A select “plantocracy” came into immense wealth, just as the demand for sugar grew and it became a dietary staple. These plantocrats built magnificent country mansions and urban townhouses back in England, in addition to their lavish island estates. The Draxes and the Lascelles were among the most prominent families of the plantocracy, with their contemporary descendants including Richard Drax, Conservative MP for Dorset South and owner of the Drax Hall estate in the parish of Saint George, and the 8th Earl of Harewood, a Lascelles as well as a first cousin, once removed, of the Queen.
Just as the Sugar Revolution began to take hold, white labour became scarce and expensive. After completing their five-year terms of indenture, many whites moved elsewhere in the Caribbean (Antigua, Jamaica), as well as to east coast of America (Carolinas and Virginia) and South America (Surinam), in search of better opportunities. The demand for labour was now met by forcibly transporting enslaved Africans, mainly from West Africa (present-day Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Senegambia, Sierra Leone) and also from West Central Africa (Congo). The Royal Africa Company, set up in 1660 and based in Bridgetown, soon took over the developing and lucrative slave trade. The dangerous journey through the Middle Passage of the Atlantic to the Caribbean claimed many African lives and was chronicled for posterity by Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa) in his 1789 memoir. Although the Slave Trade Act 1807 put an end to the trafficking of slaves, emancipation of the enslaved only came with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
Today Barbados is a parliamentary democracy, and the sugarcane industry is in decline. The Bajans, as Barbadians are commonly referred to, are a largely harmonious mix of people of West African, European, and mixed-race descent, along with smaller numbers of East Indian, Chinese and Middle Eastern (Syrians, Lebanese) residents. Barbados is a magnet for tourists from the UK and North America, attracted by its golden sandy beaches, watersports, seafood, and nightlife. But the densely populated island also has its share of problems, with a high debt-to-GDP ratio and environmental issues related to poor waste management practices. The largely symbolic break with the British monarchy will not necessarily help with economic recovery, but it will serve as another landmark in the history of Barbados as it reflects upon the past atrocities of colonialism and slavery.
Ashis Banerjee