Antigua and Barbuda

Antigua and Barbuda Wadadli–Wa’omoni
1860
Flag Coat of arms
Capital and largest city	St. John's
Common languages	Antiguan and Barbudan Creole English
Dominant mode of production	Capitalism
Government	Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
• Monarch	Charles III
• Prime Minister	Gaston Browne
Area
• Total	440 km²
Population
• 2024 estimate	104,000

Antigua and Barbuda is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean. It is a former colony of the British, and retains the British Monarch, Charles III, as its head of state.

History

Pre-colonization

People have lived on Antigua since around 3000 BC; evidence of early settlements has been found near the modern-day town of Parham. On Barbuda, a Stone-Age site dating to 1875 BC was discovered near the former Spanish fort, Martello Tower. The people who inhabited this area at the time of European contact are known as the Island Caribs, who were a blend of two Amerindian groups: the Arawaks and the Caribs.

Before the Arawaks, the Archaic peoples (sometimes historically called Ciboney) were the earliest known inhabitants of the two islands. "Ciboney" translates to "stone people" in the Arawak language. These Archaic peoples were excellent craftsmen, creating jewelry from shells and leaving many artifacts across the islands. They eventually mixed with the Arawaks and later the Caribs to form the Island Caribs.

Indigenous Island Carib society was built upon a form of primitive communism - subsistence system. These communities operated within a framework of communal ownership and cooperative labor, where food was produced to be consumed and shared to ensure the entire community was fed. They were primarily subsistence farmers who also made pottery and cultivated a variety of crops, including pineapples, cotton, and peanuts. Their most important crop, however, was the cassava root.

The Arawaks introduced intensive agriculture, as well as crops like corn, tobacco, cotton, chili peppers, and black pineapples. They established fishing villages and introduced an architectural style designed to harvest rainwater more efficiently using tall roofs. They also introduced advanced boat-building to the region and had dedicated villages for this craft, as fishing was a major food source.

Cassava played such an important role in their society that they not only created cassava bread as a staple food, a process that involved removing its poisonous juice through a woven tipiti tube to create flour, but their supreme god, Yocahu, was also affiliated with the crop.

The Arawaks were expert canoe builders who constructed massive dugout canoes capable of carrying 70 or more people for trade with other islands and for travel. Historical records indicate that they also used montones, a technique involving mounds of soil to improve drainage and soil quality, along with various irrigation systems.

Island Carib men wore their hair long and occasionally wore aprons; though they were often nude, they did adorn themselves with sea-shell jewelry. They were polytheistic, worshipping three primary gods: a main supreme god and two lesser deities. Their supreme god was Yocahu. The other two were Atabeyra, the goddess of fertility, and Opiyel Wa'obiran, the god of death, who took the form of a dog.

Most of the Island Caribs were killed by European diseases, such as smallpox and influenza. Those who survived were often massacred by English and French settlers, while others were enslaved and ultimately absorbed into the population of African slaves brought to the islands by British colonists.

Even before the English and French settlers began their genocide against the natives, the Spanish had launched slave raids from Hispaniola (the island now shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti). These raids captured and enslaved the Island Caribs, forcing them to work in mines and plantations. This led to significant depopulation, which made the subsequent genocide committed by the English and French settlers easier.

The English settlers, after cleansing the island of the Caribs around 1632, intended to use the land for sugar plantations and then later on brought the African slaves over to the island to tend to the sugar plantations. Antigua and Barbuda were called Waladli and Wa’omoni by the Island Caribs. Waladli is still used by locals today.

Colonization

Christopher Columbus was the first European to sight the islands in 1493, naming one of them Santa Maria de la Antigua after a church in Seville, Spain. Initial colonization attempts failed due to raids and attacks by the Arawak people. The first successful European settlement was established by the English, who arrived from the Caribbean island of St. Kitts in 1632.

Due to previous Spanish slave raids that had left the island depopulated and weakened, the English were able to carry out a genocide against the remaining Island Caribs. The few surviving Caribs mixed with the growing population of African slaves, which explains the absence of historical references to the Caribs after 1705.

Following this, the English began establishing settlements and plantations. Tobacco and sugar were the primary crops, though tobacco was eventually abandoned due to its detrimental effect on the soil. From the outset, the plan involved importing enslaved people from West Africa to work the plantations. As sugar cane became increasingly vital to the British Empire, there was a strong incentive to expand these operations. This led to the massive importation of slaves, who soon vastly outnumbered the European settlers.

Because of the economic importance of the sugar plantations, the English needed to protect them from French and Spanish attacks. The British Navy established English Harbor in Antigua and built numerous forts around the islands. However, the resources devoted to these defenses and the ongoing threat of attack meant that enslaved Africans faced increasingly brutal conditions. One common punishment was to tie people to a tree known as the "agony tree",a tree covered in sharp spikes, where they were whipped. The tree's sap could cause blindness if it made contact with the eyes.

Enslaved people were forced to work without protective gear near sugar-cane mills, where the heavy rollers sometimes crushed their limbs, losing their arms. Others were forced to labor in intensely hot boiling houses, removing impurities from the sugar.

Some slave masters also forced enslaved people to place torches near the reefs of Barbuda to trick passing ships. Captains would mistake the lights for safe landing points and steer toward them, causing the ships to crash on the reefs. The masters would then order the enslaved people to loot the wrecked ships. Since slaves were viewed as expendable, the masters considered the loss of a few lives an acceptable cost for this practice, which served as a source of extra income alongside hunting and the sugar plantations.

Throughout the era of slavery, numerous uprisings occurred on both islands due to the brutal conditions imposed by the British. Major revolts took place in 1701 and 1729, and a series of rebellions were organized between 1741 and 1835. In 1834, when the British attempted to transport slaves from Barbuda to Antigua, the enslaved people rebelled, took control of Barbuda, and established a system of communal land ownership.

Even after the abolition of slavery, many were forced into wage labor to survive. They continued to live in the same small huts as before, working for low pay and with no rights. Black workers could be jailed or whipped for minor offenses. Even more disturbingly, there was a pattern of murders of Black workers that went systematically unpunished due to a lack of investigation on purpose.

Riots and protests were met with violence, and police would shoot Black working-class demonstrators on the spot. This climate of terror taught Black workers that demanding better treatment led to the murder of themselves and their families.

Independence

In 1981 Antigua and Barbuda were granted independence from the United Kingdom leading to a politically dominant Antigua as the island holds over 95% of the nations population.

Hurricane Irma devastated Barbuda in 2017 leading to the majority of the residents moving to Antigua as refugees. The Antigua Labor Party (ALP) lead by Prime Minister Gaston Browne took this opportunity to start taking control of Barbudan land, and selling it to American tourism firms.

In 2019, Prime Minister Browne demanded reparations from Harvard University, which received hundreds of acres of land from the Codringtons.

Economy

Antigua and Barbuda's economy relies on oil exports and tourism from the Global North. 82% of workers in Antigua and Barbuda work in the service industry.