Small Island Nation

This little single island country, only 34km by 22km, is set apart from its neighbours, alone in the south east Caribbean. It's relatively flat and comprised of coral on sedimentary rock, so there is little soil. It's hard to imagine anyone finding it let alone settling here. 

The original inhabitants have been called variously Arawaks or Amerindians, and were reportedly moved out by the Caribs, who came from South America in the 1200s. The Caribs themselves left the island about the time the Portuguese landed here in 1536. It was almost 100 years later than anyone else came to the island, the English, in 1625.

Until that point, the only creature living here, other than migratory birds, was a grass snake, but the English changed everything, as they had a habit of doing.

They landed in what became known as Jamestown, after King James 1 who was on the throne at the time. Settlers there cut down trees, which started the slow decline of soil erosion, and planted both cotton and tobacco, the money crops of the day. Sugar was added in the 1640s and because tending sugar required a lot of labour, people were abducted in Africa and brought to Barbados as slaves. Cromwell added Irish to the slave population.

So the prosperity and history of Barbados is the story of slavery and everything that brought. Large garrisons to defend the crops and control the workers. Jacobean and Georgian homes to house the white owners. Even after slavery was abolished, the black workers were indentured, charged rents, paid a pittance and treated badly, which led to the design of so-called chattel houses. If a worker was fired and told to leave the premises, the house could easily be dismantled in pieces and carried off to another location. These chattels were, and still are as there are many still existing as well as built in the style, tiny houses, attached to tiny houses.  

garrison region buildings

chattel houses

built in 1658, this is one of the last Jacobean houses anywhere in the world,
a plantation known as St. Nicholas Abbey
(the Abbey part added to distract attention from the fact that it was a plantation) 

With US cotton and tobacco leading the way, and British sugar beets providing sugar, Barbados turned to molasses and rum, made from sugar cane. Rum and tourism are the predominant economy now, both of which we are happy to support.   

steam powered equipment still used for rum making,
 here extracting the sugar cane juice

locally made rum bottle