Bearded Barbados swapped Crown for republic in 2021
Easternmost and southernmost of the Caribbean's main island chain, Barbados sits on a tectonic plate boundary with Bridgetown as capital. English settlers claimed it in 1625 and colonised from 1627. Independence on 30 November 1966 kept Elizabeth II as queen until the 30 November 2021 republic transition.
The island is still rising. About 700,000 years ago a plume of soft rock pushed up from the mantle and lifted it out of the sea, and it keeps climbing by roughly 30 centimetres every thousand years, which is why old reefs now form inland terraces and cliffs. People may have visited around 1600 BC; Saladoid-Barrancoid villagers settled between the 4th and 7th centuries, and Arawaks from South America arrived around 800 and again in the 12th and 13th centuries.
The Arawakan name Ichirouganaim may mean "red land with white teeth," a nod to the reefs. Whether the later "bearded ones" referred to the dangling roots of the native bearded fig, supposedly bearded Kalinago, or sea spray over the reefs remains unclear; the Genoese mapmaker Visconte Maggiolo placed it correctly on a map in 1519. The Portuguese left behind only wild boars, released as a meat supply for passing ships. Locals still call the island Bim, possibly from an Igbo word for home, reflecting the many Igbo captives brought in the 18th century.
Captain John Powell's ship landed in 1625, and on 17 February 1627 his brother Henry founded a settlement near today's Holetown with 80 colonists and 10 indentured labourers. The House of Assembly dates from 1639. Between 1640 and 1660 the West Indies drew over two-thirds of English emigrants to the Americas, and in the 1650s thousands of Irish prisoners and kidnapped labourers were shipped over, a practice called being "Barbadosed." During the English Civil War, royalists held the island until surrendering to Sir George Ayscue's force in January 1652, sealed by the Charter of Barbados signed at the Mermaid's Inn in Oistins.
As sugar demanded ever more labour, African slaves replaced white servants, and their descendants now make up over 90% of the population. Slavery ended under the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Barbados today ranks among the Caribbean's leading tourist destinations, with a ceremonial president as head of state.
Source: Barbados
