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.

British Rule

In 1685, the British leased the island of Barbuda to the slaveholding Codrington family. Enslaved Africans organized a series of rebellions between 1741 and 1835. In 1834, the British tried to transport slaves in Barbuda to Antigua, but they rebelled, took control of Barbuda, and established communal ownership of land.

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.