ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly outlines the history of Barbados, and describes the economic and political situation in the 1920s when Ida Greaves left Barbados to continue her education in England. The “plantocracy”, in which European planter interests dominated, had led to festering social unrest among the disenfranchised black majority. The education system itself was highly segregated by class and colour. Ida Greaves attended a small private school exclusively for white girls. At the age of 15, she left Barbados to attend an English boarding school. Her destination, Malvern Girls’ College, attracted boarders from the colonies, and from families of English and Scottish descent. It was a boarding school recognised for its high academic standards. Her choice of university, McGill in Canada, was unusual and her intended degree subject, economic and political science, was also out of the ordinary for women at that time.
