A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Caribbean Single Market

Highly acclaimed when it first appeared in 1990, this general history of Barbados traces the events and ideas that have shaped the collaborative experience of all the islands inhabitants. In this second edition, Hilary Beckles updates the text to reflect the considerable number of writings recently published on Barbados. He presents new insights and analyses key events in a lucid and provocative style which will appeal to all those who have an interest in the island's past and present. Using a vigorous approach, Hilary Beckles examines how the influences of the Amerindians, European colonisation, the sugar industry, the African slave trade, emancipation, the civil rights movement, independence in 1966 and nationalism have shaped contemporary Barbados.

Customer Reviews:

Careful, interesting and informative, although flawed

By Jerry Dwyer - July 16, 2010

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... read more

Mandatory reading for any author of Caribbean literature

By E. Downer - April 1, 2012

This is the one book I turned to when I decided to put pen to paper for my historic novel. No work of history or even of fiction that is focused on Barbados (or even on the greater Caribbean) can claim authenticity without referring to this book by Sir Hilary Beckles.