The earliest inhabitants on Barbados were Native American nomads whom most historians refer to as Amerindians. The island was a temporary stopping ground for three successive waves of Amerindian migrants moving north toward North America. The first wave, a group known as the Saladoid-Barrancoid, migrated by canoe from South America around 350 c.e. They were farmers, fishermen, and ceramists. Many of their customs and languages resembled those of the Arawak, who were among the largest indigenous groups in the Caribbean in the first century c.e. The Arawak, also known as the Lokono, constituted the second wave of Amerindian migrants, arriving in Barbados from South America around 800 c.e. Some of the more famous extant Arawak settlements include Stroud Point, Chandler Bay, Saint Luke's Gully, and Mapp's Cave. The Arawak lived relatively isolated from other Amerindian groups until the thirteenth century, when the Carib arrived from South America, representing the third wave. Within a few years the Carib had displaced both the Arawak and the Salodoid-Barrancoid populations. For centuries the Carib lived in isolation on the island. However, that peaceful existence was disrupted in the first decade of the sixteenth century when Spanish conquistadors began enslaving Amerindians throughout the Caribbean, forcing them to work as slaves on plantations throughout the region. The Carib on Barbados were among those seized by Spanish conquistadors. Scholars believe that those Carib who managed to avoid enslavement did so by emigrating to nearby islands. Both of these forces - the enslavement and subsequent emigration - left the island uninhabited by the time the first British ship arrived in 1625.
Although Barbados was well known to Spanish and Portuguese sailors at least a century earlier, Great Britain did not become acquainted with the island until the seventeenth century. On May 14, 1625, a ship led by the British captain John Powell stopped to explore the island. After verifying that it was uninhabited, Powell returned to England to formalize the plan to establish a permanent settlement on Barbados. Two years later, on February 17, 1627, a British ship carrying 10 African slaves and more than 80 British colonists landed on the western side of the island, at a site later named Holetown Village. There were few colonists who could afford to purchase slaves, so most had to work the land themselves. But even though the slave population was small - according to the records of a British merchant there were less than 50 in 1629 - they occupied a central position in the Barbadian economy from the onset. African and Amerindian slaves were forced to perform some of the most physically demanding work, such as constructing colonial buildings and clearing land for colonial homes. Their status as the property of white settlers was formalized in 1636 when colonial officials passed a law declaring all slaves who were brought into Barbados - both Amerindian and African - to be enslaved for life. This law was extended to include the offspring of slaves. During this period there were only 22 free people of color on the island - Amerindian farmers from the Guianas brought in to teach the settlers new agricultural techniques.
European indentured servants were the primary source of labor during most of the island's history throughout the seventeenth century. Poor, uneducated laborers were recruited in England, Scotland, and throughout Europe to work on tobacco and cotton plantations. Although they could not be enslaved under law, indentured servants during this period were considered tenants at will. They could not own the land they worked and were unable to leave the plantation without permission in the form of a pass from their employer. The harsh conditions of indentured servitude made it increasingly difficult for Barbadian tobacco and cotton planters to recruit white labor. As the labor supply dwindled, so did the capacity of the island's tobacco and cotton producers to compete with their international competitors. A drop in world tobacco prices in the early 1640s further weakened the island's economy.
In 1642 Dutch merchants introduced them to a far more lucrative crop - sugar cane. Before 1642 sugar was used in Barbados mainly as fuel, in the production of rum, and to feed livestock. By 1644 large sugar cane plantations were producing sugar exports across the island.
The political infrastructure of Barbados drew wealthy landowners; with political participation tied to landowning, they reigned supreme. The planter elite, or so-called plantocracy, excluded all nonwhites and most poor whites from participation in government affairs. In the words of historian Hilary Beckles: "Partly because of these political and constitutional developments, Barbados emerged in the mid-1640s as perhaps the most attractive colony in the English New World." Land values doubled and tripled in the 1640s as wealthy British capitalists flocked to Barbados to commence the operation of sugar plantations.
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries slaves from various parts of West Africa, including the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) and Benin, were packed in crowded European vessels bound for the Caribbean. The transatlantic slave trade carried between 10 and 20 million African slaves to colonial plantations throughout the world. By the mid-seventeenth century Barbados was already a leading participant in the slave trade and one of the most profitable European colonies in the world. In 1645 there were an estimated 5680 African slaves in Barbados. In 1685, 40 years later, their numbers had soared to nearly 60,000. Historian Philip Curtin estimates that by 1700 there were 134,500 African-born slaves in Barbados.
As the African presence increased in Barbados, white indentured servants, who at one time had been the primary source of labor, began to question their place in the island's future. At the turn of the eighteenth century white indentured servants began leaving Barbados in waves.
The enormous profits accumulated by white plantation owners in Barbados made the island a haven for the European elite. Since most of them were sugar and tobacco planters, they became known as the white plantocracy - a planter elite that controlled the economic, legislative, and political affairs of the island. During the eighteenth century the Barbadian plantocracy solidified its power, and in the process perpetuated the racial and class-based distinctions in Barbados. Ownership of land became concentrated in the hands of fewer than 100 of the colony's elite families, in contrast to the more than 700 landowning families in 1667. Members of the plantocracy firmly controlled the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council. They lived on a grand scale, building elaborate estates like Drax Hall and Nicholas Abbey, which still exist.
They promoted slave reproduction in an effort to avoid dependence on the importation of slaves.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century Barbados was the only island in the British Caribbean that was no longer dependent on slave imports. The British Parliament met with little resistance from Barbadian planters when it abolished the international slave trade in 1807.
