Barbados historical timeline

Origins

Arawak and later Kalinago people settled the island from South America. Portuguese sailors named it Os Barbados, the bearded ones, probably for the fig trees. The English found it uninhabited in 1625 and settled it in 1627, and unlike almost every other Caribbean island it never changed hands — there is no French or Spanish or Dutch period, which is why the institutions, the parish map and the accent all look the way they do.

Turning points

In the 1640s planters learned sugar from the Dutch, and within a decade Barbados became the first true plantation colony in the English-speaking world: small, intensively worked, and dependent on enslaved Africans imported in enormous numbers. It then exported the model. The Barbados Slave Code of 1661 was copied into law in Jamaica, Antigua and the Carolinas, and Barbadian planters carried the whole system to South Carolina. Bussa led a rebellion in 1816; slavery was abolished in 1834. Universal adult suffrage came in 1951, independence on 30 November 1966, and on the same date in 2021 Barbados became a republic, removing the British monarch as head of state after 396 years.

Influential people

Bussa, who led the 1816 rebellion and is a national hero. Samuel Jackman Prescod, the first man of colour elected to the assembly. Sir Grantley Adams and Errol Barrow, who between them took the island from colony to independent state. Sir Garfield Sobers, widely held to be the finest all-round cricketer who ever played. Rihanna, named a national hero on the day the republic was declared. And Mia Mottley, whose government made that declaration.

Cultural evolution

Crop Over began as the celebration at the end of the sugar harvest, lapsed, and was revived in 1974 as a season of calypso competitions and costume bands ending with Grand Kadooment in early August. Cricket is not a sport here so much as a civic institution. The eleven Anglican parishes still serve as the administrative map. And the island’s old nickname, Little England, is now used more often to be argued with than agreed to.

Present-day significance

Tourism and international business carry the economy. Since becoming a republic Barbados has taken a role in international climate diplomacy well out of proportion to its size: the Bridgetown Initiative, its proposal for reforming how development banks lend to vulnerable countries, is debated in forums where a nation of under three hundred thousand people would not usually be heard.