A History of Barbados (Caribbean)

This is a great book that shows the love one man has for his island. More than being written by a capable scholar with a clear and direct prose style, Hilary Beckles impresses on the reader that recounting a comprehensive history of one's birthplace is not just an academic endeavor, but an act of love and solidarity with the people. I read the first edition but, seeing as that there is already a second, I would imagine that Dr. Beckles has expanded his notion of history as evinced within the concept of Barbados. If a study leaves the reader wanting more, then this is great, since it connotes that one can never fully comprehend what it is one loves so much. Knowledge forever expands. I owe Dr. Beckles the thought that Barbados is an "islandwide community," for it has impacted my academic pursuits and a notion of a world mindframe. Oneness.

Great book

I was hoping for more Pirates and lusty maidens. I read this book in preparation for Cropover in Barbados. I was hoping to develop an appreciation for the History of the place before I went down there. I envisioned daily field trips to historical places before feting the night away in willful abandon. I stayed at a hotel not 500 Meters from the George Washington house. Well, the book was OK. The Cropover was Fantastic. If I saw something historic, it was through my Scotch Goggles. I would recommend Cropover. This book not so much. However, it's not a bad book. If you are crazy about Barbados, you should have it on your shelf. If you are simply curious about Barbados, OK, get the book. If you enjoy a good slave uprising, and we all do, spoiler alert...it's in this book. Do not bother to bring this book to Cropover though unless you intend to simply use it as a coaster.

This is a careful, thorough history of Barbados. It is a scholarly work in the best sense. It is interesting, thorough, clear and well written. If you are interested in the history of Barbados, as I am, you will be glad you read the book. It covers the entire history of Barbados, with perhaps only recent history being a little short on detail.Beckles writes with a point of view: the history of Barbados is a struggle between the slaves and later freed people against a monolithic "plantocracy." The book is not particularly good at sorting out currents and cross-currents in developments, instead forcing everything to fit into this this point of view, whether or not the people or the developments really fit.Beckles has no capability of seeing the history of Barbados from the viewpoint of people who were not slaves, whether they are rich English people or poor Irish people. People from both of these groups were in Barbados for hundreds of years, in fact they were in Barbados before African slavery. He mentions in passing that many of these people left Barbados in the last half of the twentieth century, without discussing either the number who left or the underlying reasons or implications.The observations in the book related to economics are simply dreadful. I am a professional economist, so this probably is a bigger deal to me than you unless you are an economist, but Beckles has no grasp of basic economics. Beckles presents simplistic answers when the results of thoughtful analysis would be informative.The discussion of population and emigration is particularly poor. He sees emigration as all bad. It is hard for those leaving. Still, Beckles does not seem to realize that emigration raised the wages of those remaining in Barbados. He does seem to realize that small peasant holdings did not come into existence in Barbados precisely because the land was productive in producing cash crops on large farms or plantations. Still, rather than examine whether smallholdings were quite unlikely no matter who owned the land when slavery was abolished and what might have happened instead, Beckles blames the evil plantocracy for getting in the way of the former slaves' aspirations and leaves it at that.This is easily the most careful and thorough history of Barbados available. It is the best place to get the actual developments, even though you will not get a good understanding of why they happened.I highly recommend it.

A beautifully written and impressively researched history of Barbados, a little island that has had a powerful impact on Britain, the USA and the Caribbean. A true pleasure to read!

I bought this book because my paternal ancestry came from Barbados. It is not written only from the European colonizer's governing perspective but also strongly includes the Afro-Caribbean perspective, from the days of slavery through to independence and beyond. It comes with a substantial and comprehensive bibliography for those who want to research further. This historical account provided vital background reading to help fill in the political, social and economic background to my ancestral research. It was very helpful in providing approximate dates for when my great-grandparents left Barbados for Antigua, c. 1863-1871, which seems to tally with what my 3 aunts said. It also corroborated Dyde's history of Antigua about several hundred Barbadian migrants. I learnt that the economic and social hardships in Barbados at the time may have been a contributing factor in my ancestors decision to move to Antigua, they were paid 2 pence per day more and offered various other incentives such as, free migration costs, small plots of land to grow food, and medical cover, so it provided very useful background reading in this regard. It also identifies various tribes and countries from which the early West African slaves came from, c.1647-1700, for those who may be able to trace their Barbadian ancestry that far back, which I suspect may not be many. If like me you are only able to trace your ancestry back 3 generations to the 1870s/1860s, the best you may have to rely upon is Emory University's website for slave voyages, which provides broad African regions along the coast from which the slaves were sold to the Europeans, down to 1807/8, and occasionally afterwards.

Informative but a bit difficult to read as it seems to be written as a thesis.

This book focusses solely on the economic, political and social aspects of the history of Barbados. It is probably interesting for scholars of that field, but for a layman it is quite boring. There are no accounts of pirates, the establishment and urban development of Bridgetown, events during the two world wars, the arrival of tourism and other events laymen would call history. Sad!

Like other history books of this calibre, full of information, very interesting, yet still many spelling and grammar errors. It doesn't exactly disrupt the book, but is slightly annoying, especially when the author seems perfectly capable of writing properly, and anything more than a cursory look would have removed most errors. Don't let that put you off, it is the best book on the history of Barbados you could probably get and puts the island's history into a wider context too.