Barbados, the easternmost island of the Caribbean's Lesser Antilles, is a coral island formed in pre-historic times by erupting volcanoes. All that activity has left modern-day visitors a 21-mile-long playground for beachgoers, scuba divers, snorkelers, golfers, fishing enthusiasts and just about anyone seeking fun.
» Barbados General Information
Area: 430 sq km (166 sq miles)
Capital: Bridgetown
Currency: Barbados dollar
GNI per capita: US$9,260 (World Bank, 2005)
Head of state: Queen Elizabeth II, represented by a governor-general.
New Year's Day; Good Friday; Easter Monday; Whit-Monday; Labour Day; Kadooment Day (first Monday in August); United Nations Day (first Monday in October); Independence Day (30 Nov); Christmas; Boxing Day.
› Visas
Visas are required for citizens from China, Taiwan, Pakistan, non-Commonwealth African countries and all South American countries except Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. All visitors are officially required to be in possession of an onward or return ticket.
» Barbados History
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. In the 13th century, the Caribs arrived from South America in the third wave, displacing both the Arawak and the Salodoid-Barrancoid.
A Portuguese explorer named Pedro Campos 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.
Large numbers of Celtic people, mainly from Ireland and Scotland, went to Barbados as indentured servants. 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 some of the poorest inhabitants of modern Barbados. There has also been large scale intermarriage between the African and Celtic populations on the islands. Because the Africans could withstand tropical diseases and the climate much better than the white slave population, and also because those poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so, Barbados turned from mainly Celtic in the 17th century to overwhelmingly black by the 20th century.
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. To work the plantations, West Africans were transported and enslaved on Barbados and other Caribbean islands. The slave trade ceased in 1804. 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.
Famed for its white sandy beaches and crystal-clear waters, the west coast of Barbados is home to the All Seasons Resort Hotel. This St James resort hotel Barbados is one of the island's best hotels.
Only a short 10-minute drive from Barbados Airport, the Tropical Winds Apartment Hotel, Long Bay, offers affordable Barbados appartments and hotel rooms.
This beach property is near St. James Parish Church, Folkestone Marine Park, and Holetown Beach. Another attraction in the area includes Holetown Monument.
Settlers Beach Villa Hotel features a restaurant, serving breakfast only. The property p
