|
Barbados
More Caribbean Islands Travel Guide - Hotels - Rental Cars and
Resort vacations
Find a premier Hotel & Resort at
Hilton Hotels.
or book Sheraton Hotels and Resorts
|
|
|
Barbados |
Bridgetown
|
Christ Church
|
St. Peter |
|
|
Barbados is an island nation located
towards the east of the Caribbean Sea and in the
west of the Atlantic Ocean, part of the eastern
islands of the Lesser Antilles, with the nations
of Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines being its closest neighbours. The
island is 430 km2 (166 square miles), and is
primarily low-lying, with some higher areas in
the island's interior. It is located 13° north
of the Equator and 59° west of the Prime
Meridian, about 434.5 km (270 miles) northeast
of Venezuela.
Barbados is predominantly composed of coral and
limestone. It is tropical with constant trade
winds and contains of some marshes and mangrove
swamps. Some parts of the island's interior are
also dotted with large sugarcane estates and
wide pastures with many good views to the sea.
Barbados has one of the highest standards of
living and literacy rates in the world and,
according to the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), is currently the No. 1
developing country in the world. The island is a
major tourist destination.
History
Main articles: History of Barbados,
The earliest inhabitants of Barbados were
Amerindian nomads. Three waves of migrants moved
north toward North America. The first wave was
of the Saladoid-Barrancoid group, who were
farmers, fishermen, and ceramists that arrived
by canoe from South America (Venezuela's Orinoco
Valley) around 350 CE. The Arawak people were
the second wave of migrants, arriving from South
America around 800 CE. Arawak settlements on the
island include Stroud Point, Chandler Bay, Saint
Luke's Gully, and Mapp's Cave. According to
accounts by descendants of the aboriginal Arawak
tribes on other local islands, the original name
for Barbados was Ichirouganaim. In the 13th
century, the Caribs arrived from South America
in the third wave, displacing both the Arawak
and the Salodoid-Barrancoid. For the next few
centuries, the Caribs—like the Arawak and the
Salodoid-Barrancoid—lived in isolation on the
island.
The name "Barbados" comes from a Portuguese
explorer named Pedro Campos in 1536, who
originally called the island Los Barbados ("The
Bearded Ones"), upon seeing the appearance of
the island's fig trees, whose long hanging
aerial roots he thought resembled beards.
Between Campos' sighting in 1536 and 1550,
Spanish conquistadors seized many Caribs on
Barbados and used them as slave labor on
plantations. Other Caribs fled the island,
moving elsewhere.
British sailors who landed on Barbados in the
1620s at the site of present-day Holetown on the
Caribbean coast found the island uninhabited.
From the arrival of the first British settlers
in 1627–1628 until independence in 1966,
Barbados was under uninterrupted British
control. Nevertheless, Barbados always enjoyed a
large measure of local autonomy. Its House of
Assembly began meeting in 1639. Among the
initial important British figures was Sir
William Courten.
Large numbers of Celtic people, mainly from
Ireland and Scotland, were sold into slavery in
Barbados as the British Empire consolidated its
control of all three nations and used mass
transportation of populations in rebellion as a
way to undermine local nationalist movements.
The earliest of these mass transportations
occurred in 1649 at the conclusion of Oliver
Cromwell's successful invasion of Ireland and
included an estimated one-third of the
indigenous Celtic population of Ulster. Over the
next several centuries the Celtic population was
used as a buffer between the Anglo-Saxon
plantation owners and the larger African
population, variously serving as members of the
Colonial militia and playing a strong role as
allies of the larger African slave population in
a long string of colonial rebellions. The modern
descendants of this original slave population
are sometimes derisively referred to as Red Legs
and are some of the poorest inhabitants of
modern Barbados. There has also been large scale
intermarriage between the African and Celtic
populations on the islands.
As the sugar industry developed into the main
commercial enterprise, Barbados was divided into
large plantation estates that replaced the small
holdings of the early British settlers. Some of
the displaced farmers relocated to British
colonies in North America, most notably South
Carolina. To work the plantations, West Africans
were transported and enslaved on Barbados and
other Caribbean islands. The slave trade ceased
in 1804. Thirty years later slavery was
abolished in the British Empire in 1834. In
Barbados and the rest of the British West Indian
colonies, full emancipation from slavery was
preceded by an apprenticeship period that lasted
six years.
Plantation owners and merchants of British
descent dominated local politics. It was not
until the 1930s that the descendants of
emancipated slaves began a movement for
political rights. One of the leaders of this
movement, Sir Grantley Adams, founded the
Barbados Labour Party in 1938.
Progress toward more democratic government for
Barbados was made in 1951, when universal adult
suffrage was introduced, followed by steps
toward increased self-government, and in 1961,
Barbados achieved internal autonomy.
From 1958 to 1962, Barbados was one of the ten
members of the West Indies Federation, and Sir
Grantley Adams served as its first and only
prime minister. When the federation was
dissolved, Barbados reverted to its former
status as a self-governing colony. Following
several attempts to form another federation
composed of Barbados and the Leeward and
Windward Islands, Barbados negotiated its own
independence at a constitutional conference with
the United Kingdom in June 1966. After years of
peaceful and democratic progress, Barbados
became an independent state within the
Commonwealth of Nations on November 30, 1966.
Geography
Main articles: Geography of Barbados,
Barbados is a relatively flat island, rising
gently to central highland region, the highest
point being Mount Hillaby at 336 m (1,100 feet)
above sea level. The island is located in a
slightly eccentric position in the Atlantic
Ocean compared to other Caribbean islands. The
climate is tropical, with a rainy season from
June to October.
Though one might assume the island deals with
severe tropical storms and hurricanes during the
rainy season it actually does not. The island
gets brushed or hit every 3.09 years and the
average number of years between direct hurricane
hits is once every 26.6 years.
In the parish of Saint Michael lies Barbados'
chief city Bridgetown, which is the nation's
capital. Locally Bridgetown is sometimes
referred to as "The City" or "B-town", and the
most common reference is simply "'Town". Other
towns include Holetown, in the parish of Saint
James and Speightstown, in the parish of Saint
Peter.
The island is 23 km (14 miles) at its widest
point, and about 34 km (21 miles) long.
|
|
|
Background:
|
The
island was uninhabited when first settled by the
British in 1627. Slaves worked the sugar plantations
established on the island until 1834 when slavery
was abolished. The economy remained heavily
dependent on sugar, rum, and molasses production
through most of the 20th century. The gradual
introduction of social and political reforms in the
1940s and 1950s led to complete independence from
the UK in 1966. In the 1990s, tourism and
manufacturing surpassed the sugar industry in
economic importance. |
|
Location:
|
Caribbean, island between the Caribbean Sea and the
North Atlantic Ocean, northeast of Venezuela
|
|
Geographic coordinates:
|
13 10
N, 59 32 W
|
|
Map references:
|
Central America and the Caribbean |
|
Area:
|
total: 431 sq km
water: 0 sq km
land: 431 sq km |
|
Area - comparative:
|
2.5
times the size of Washington, DC |
|
Nationality:
|
noun: Barbadian(s) or Bajan (colloquial)
adjective: Barbadian or Bajan (colloquial)
|
|
Ethnic groups:
|
black
90%, white 4%, Asian and mixed 6% |
|
Religions:
|
Protestant 67% (Anglican 40%, Pentecostal 8%,
Methodist 7%, other 12%), Roman Catholic 4%, none
17%, other 12% |
|
Languages:
|
English |
|
Currency:
|
Barbadian dollar (BBD) |
|
Currency code:
|
BBD
|
|
Exchange rates:
|
Barbadian dollars per US dollar - 2.0000 (fixed rate
pegged to the US dollar) |
|
Internet country code:
|
.bb
|
|
|
|
|
|
