Antigua and Barbuda / History, Population, Politics

History

There is evidence of human habitation in Antigua for the past 4500 years. Successive waves of Indians made their way north along the island chain from South America, in family groups and small tribes that settled mostly near the coast. The earliest of these were the Siboneys (stone people), Archaic Age Indians who left behnd shell and stone implements. They were followed by Arawaks, who arrived at about the time of Christ and migrated through the islands for the next thousand years, living on fish and growing cassava. They have left pottery and a name by which the island (and its beer) is still known – Wadadli (originally Waladli). The Arawaks were followed by another South American tribe, the Caribs, who of course gave their name to the whole region. The Caribs dominated the Arawaks and by the time Europeans arrived in the 1490s the two peoples had become mixed.

The island was spotted and ‘christened’ by Columbus when he passed by on his second voyage to the New World in 1493. After arriving across the Atlantic at Guadeloupe he headed north along the island chain, naming the various islands as he went. To Waladli he gave the name Santa Maria de la Antigua, in honour of a statue of the Virgin Mary in Seville Cathedral.

Over the next century the island was used as a stopover by the Spanish and by the increasing numbers of adventurer and other seafarers, for its excellent harbours. But as the Spaniards had many other more valuable territories in the area they never settled it permanently and it was not until 1625 that there was a permanent European settlement, some British colonizers who had come from St Kitts. The island was fought over for a long while (initially with the Caribs who were keen to keep the Europeans out of the area, and then between the Europeans themselves), but with the exception of a short period of occupation by the French, Antigua remained in British hands until it was granted independence in 1981.

Gradually, because of its strategic value and excellent harbours, it became one of the three most important bases for the British in the area (along with Barbados and Jamaica). The result was that Antigua became one of the most heavily fortified places on earth. You can see abandoned forts all over the island (at one stage there was a defensive structure every mile and half around the whole coast of the island), but the most famous historic area is Nelson’s Dockyard in the south-east, named after the famous British admiral who spent some time there in the 1780s. It is now the only example of a restored Georgian naval dockyard in the world.

Like so many of the other Caribbean islands Antigua started to grow sugar, or ‘white gold’ as it was known in the Eighteenth Century. For a while the whole island was divided up into plantations (you can see how many, by the many old windmill shells where the cane would be crushed). There is a restored plantation that explains the whole story at Betty’s Hope in the east of the island. Sugar cultivation was dependent on slave labour and so huge numbers of Africans were forcibly shipped across. Their descendants make up the bulk of the population of Antigua today. The industry was never a huge success in Antigua and when Slavery and then the system of Apprenticeship were abolished in 1834 and 1838 it folded fairly quickly.

The island went into the doldrums, but in parallel with political movements all over the Caribbean, Antigua began to take charge of its own political destiny at the beginning of the 1900s. Eventually Antigua, Barbuda and Redonda took their independence from Britain in 1981. Tourism is the biggest industry in the island.

Barbuda has been connected politically to Antigua from early days of European involvement in the Caribbean. Originally called Dulcina by the Spaniards, perhaps for its gentle contours (its highest point is only 211 ft), it was first settled successfully by Europeans in the 1660s. Then in the 1680s the Codrington family formed a connection to the island which lasted for two centuries and whose effect lasts even to day. The Codringtons leased the island from the British Crown (rent: ‘one fat sheep, if demanded’) and their name remains in the only town, the lagoon and the tiny airport. The ruins of their estate house, Highland House, are visible in the scrub. There is also a fort, the Martello tower, which overlooks the south coast. The island was put under Antiguan control in 1860.

Plantations were even less successful in Barbuda than in Antigua (just a little cotton was grown) and so the island was used for raising animals and a deer park. The other successful industry was ‘wrecking’, salvaging cargo from ships that foundered on the island’s reefs (sometimes intentionally on the Barbudians behalf apparently, who lured them there with lanterns purporting to be lighthouses). Nowadays Barbuda has a population of 1500 that has its own council to govern its own affairs. The islanders have considerable autonomy from Antigua and have not allowed the island to be developed in the way that Antigua has.

The third island belonging to the group is Redonda, which lies in the chain of volcanoes to the west of Antigua and Barbuda. It is small, very hard to land on and extremely steep – its highest point is 970ft – and so it is uninhabited except by birds, thousands of them. And it was completely ignored for centuries, until some bright spark realised thousands of years’ worth of bird droppings was valuable as fertiliser, and so for several years it was mined for guano. Around 1890 it had an annual production of 3-4000 tons of phosphate. The few buildings that were constructed were largely destroyed in a hurricane in 1930, but the island was once developed enough to have a post office and it is still possible to find Redonda stamps.

On the basis that it was worth anything at all, the British annexed the island in the late 1800s. However, there is a rival claim to sovereignty, a weird and wonderful once literary line that passed down from a certain Matthew Shiel, who claimed the island in 1865. The story behind the claim has included literary endeavour (Matthew Shiel’s son, also a Matthew Shiel became a famous novelist and counted JB Priestly and Rebecca West as ‘courtiers’), poetry (the poet John Gawsworth was King for a while), the pub (Gawsworth spent a lot of time there), and most recently a series of claims of lineage and counter-claims, tirades and tantrums and otherwise mature people getting very worked up. All good fun.

Population

The population of Antigua stands at around 68,000. It had been decreasing steadily over the past few years but then jumped recently with the arrival of around 1200 Montserratians who were fleeing their own island because of the eruption of its volcano. Barbuda has around 1500 inhabitants, most of whom live around the only town, Codrington.

Most Antiguans are of African descent. Their ancestors were brought to the island as slaves to work the sugar plantations. There is a small white population and there has been an influx from other islands in the Caribbean, including Latin Americans, many from the Dominican Republic.

Politics

Antigua and Barbuda is a parliamentary democracy after the Westminster model, with two houses, an elected House of Representatives with 19 members (17 of whom are returned by constituencies every five years) and an upper house, the Senate, in which there are 17 appointed members. The country is a member of the British Commonwealth and their head of State is Queen Elizabeth II. Her representative on island, the Governor General, is Dame Louise Agnetha Lake-Tack, GCMG, DStJ. The current government is led by the Hon Winston Baldwin Spencer of the United Progressive Party, which was re-elected to a second term in office in March 2009.

BARBUDA

Barbuda’s first inhabitants were also thought to be the Siboneys and a number of artefacts have been discovered along the south-west coast. Evidence of their settlements has been found close to areas including Goat Pen and Codrington, and human remains thought to be more than 3,000 years old have also been discovered near Spanish Point. The Arawaks and Caribs also made Barbuda their home and the latter named it Wa’omoni.