ABSTRACT
Sugar plantations and chattel houses perched on coral stones dug from quarries—these are characteristic features of the landscape of Barbados, the most easterly island of the Lesser Antilles chain in the Caribbean. First settled by native Americans (about a.d. 380) who were soon replaced by Island Arawak (about a.d. 1200) and later the Carib, it had a colonial history that included Portuguese settlement before the early 1600s, when England laid claim to it. Barbados has an area of 430 square kilometers and a population of about 260,000 inhabitants, predominantly of African descent but including heritages from Europe (mainly British), China, India, Lebanon, and Syria.
