The Arawak Indians arrived in the first century, followed by Caribs who settled throughout the Caribbean. Christopher Columbus spotted Antigua on his second voyage to the West Indies in and without landing named it Santa Maria de la Antigua after a saint. Sir Christopher Codrington, the first settler on Antigua, arrived in and introduced sugar cultivation to the islands. Many modern day Antiguans are descended from slaves brought to the island from Africa.
In , Barbuda was annexed to the territory of Antigua, with the small island of Redonda becoming part of Antigua 12 years later. Economic problems contributed to the growth of an independence movement and internal autonomy was achieved in February when Antigua, Barbuda and Redonda became an Associated State of the Commonwealth.
Did you know? The Barbudan accent is slightly different to the Antiguan. The population is predominantly Christian with the majority denomination being Anglican but there are also Methodists, Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists and others.
When it comes to greetings, relatives and good friends generally embrace whilst for acquaintances a handshake will do. Kincaid has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since the s, and her book-length essay, A Small Place, harshly criticizes British colonialism, the tourist industry, and government corruption and neglect in Antigua.
Antiguan playwright Dorbrene "Fats" Omarde is known for dramas that address the social and political issues confronting his country. The majority of people in Antigua and Barbuda are employed by the government.
About 11 percent of the people work in agriculture; industry employs the remaining 7 percent. Since tourism-related jobs are seasonal, it is a common practice to have ore than one source of income. This may require people to take on such part-time agricultural pursuits as keeping livestock or selling produce from backyard farming. Fishing is an important source of income on Barbuda, as are government employment and tourism. Cricket, a left-over from the British rule, is the national sport of Antigua and Barbuda.
The country has produced some of the world's best players. Antiguans play on the West Indies cricket team, which has been one of the world's best since the s.
Soccer is another popular sport. The Caribbean's most popular male pastime of dominoes is enjoyed in Antigua and Barbuda. A game called warri, a mancala -type game brought from Africa, is also popular. Cricket, soccer, and basketball are all played for recreation. Favorite types of music include calypso, reggae, and religious hymns.
Benna is a type of calypso music that comes from the song-dance of African slaves. It was sung by "Quarkoo," who were Antiguan street vendors and entertainers.
The Quarkoo were somewhat like street rappers in America. They made up Benna songs on the spot, using repeating lyrics and "call and response" with the audience. Their lyrics were often satirical or controversial, sometimes landing a Quarkoo in jail. Antiguan artisans are known for the exceptional quality of their handthrown pottery.
Striking items, both decorative and functional, are also crafted from handwoven sea cotton adorned with dyes and embroidery. Other handicrafts include woodcarving and basketry. Antigua and Barbuda has serious environmental problems. Since there is no central sewage system, contamination by raw sewage and other forms of household waste poses a serious threat to the water supply.
This is especially dangerous because the country does not have permanent natural lakes or year-round rivers. Also, the removal of sand for construction purposes threatens the nation's beaches, which are the basis of its tourist industry. Problems in the educational system have contributed to a shortage of skilled workers, and the tourist industry, while using a large number of workers, creates work that is in most cases unskilled and low-paid.
The government's abolition of personal income taxes and its reliance on foreign borrowing have left the country with a massive foreign debt. Cameron, Sarah, and Ben Box, eds. Caribbean Islands Handbook. Chicago: Passport Books, Luntta, Karl. Caribbean Handbook. Chico, Calif. Schwab, David, ed. Insight Guides. Caribbean: The Lesser Antilles. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Walton, Chelle Koster. Caribbean Ways: A Cultural Guide. Westwood, Mass. Antigua and Barbuda Department of Tourism. Toggle navigation.
Examples are: Better man belly bus' than good food waste. Fry the meat, stirring occasionally, until it is almost cooked. Remove the meat to a plate. Add all of the vegetables except peas and about 1 cup of water to the soup pot. The culture of Antigua and Barbuda local creole pronunciation, Antiga and Barbueda is a classic example of a creole culture. Specific traces of these parent cultures as well as influences from other Caribbean islands e. Location and Geography.
Antigua and Barbuda are two islands in the Eastern Caribbean chain. Antigua, or Wadadli, has an area of square miles, square kilometers while Barbuda, or Wa'omoni, is 62 square miles square kilometers in area, making for a twin island microstate of square miles square kilometers.
This state includes the tiny by Caribbean standards island of Redonda, which has remained uninhabited. Antigua is an island of both volcanic origin and sedimentary rock limestone formation. Its jagged coastline is over 90 miles kilometers long, producing hundreds of beautiful white sand beaches, bays, and coves.
Barbuda is of limestone formation and very flat. The highest point on the island rises to only feet 39 meters. The capital of this state is Saint John's, which is located at the northwestern end of Antigua.
The population census of estimated the population of Antigua and Barbuda to be 64, Approximately 93 percent of this total are Afro-Antiguans and Barbudans, 0.
The estimate by the Department of Statistics placed the population at 69, and projected a figure of 72, for These increases are the result of significant inflows of migrants from Guyana, Dominica, and the Dominican Republic.
Migrants from the latter have given rise to a small Spanish-speaking community on Antigua. Linguistic Affiliation. Given the creole nature of its culture, it is not surprising that the language spoken by the vast majority of Antiguans and Barbudans is a creole, often referred to as Antiguan creole. This makes the culture a bilingual one. The other language is standard English, which is the official language and the language of instruction.
This linguistic situation derives from the colonial history of the nation, which was one of years of near continuous British rule. Consequently, Antiguan creole is essentially a hybrid product of West African languages and English. As one moves up the class hierarchy, there is a gradual shift from creole to English as the first language.
The cultural symbols that embody the national identity of Antigua and Barbuda emerged out of the anticolonial struggles for political independence, which began in the s. Good examples of these symbols are the national anthem, the flag, and the national Antigua and Barbuda coats of arm, which display the sun, a pineapple, and the flowers and seas of the state.
They can also be seen in more fleeting form in festivals such as carnival. Emergence of the Nation. The emergence of Antigua and Barbuda as an independent nation was the result of the confluence of a number of international currents with the local struggles for decolonization. The need for such an organization was recognized by several individuals—a group that included Harold Wilson, Norris Allen, Reginald Stevens, and V.
Allen took the lead by calling the meeting at which the union was formed. Stevens was its first president and Berkeley Richards its first general secretary. As the union got more deeply involved in the struggles of workers against sugar plantation owners, it became increasingly political.
Bird vigorously pushed a heady mix of laborism and state capitalism that came to be known locally as milk and water socialism. Further, through its political arm, the ATLU began successfully contesting the small number of seats in the legislature that were elective.
The resulting acquisition of a measure of state power changed the balance of forces in the struggles of workers with plantation owners.
Between and , universal adult suffrage and self-government became high-priority demands of the union. From this point on the labor movement could not be distinguished from the nationalist movement.
This politicization led to new rounds of strikes and political confrontations with the planters and the elites of the colonial state. These struggles, reinforced by those in other Caribbean territories, by the struggles in African countries, and by the opposition of the United States and Russia to European colonial policies, finally pushed the British to dismantle their empire. The dismantling was executed via a process of constitutional decolonization that gradually transferred sovereignty to a set of elected leaders such as those of the ALP.
Between and , when Antigua and Barbuda achieved independence from Britain, there were at least five important sets of decolonizing constitutional changes that paved the way to national independence.
As the leader of the ALP, Bird was the nation's first prime minister. Ethnic Relations. At the top of this hierarchy were the British, who justified their hegemony with arguments of white supremacy and civilizing missions. Among themselves, there were divisions between British Antiguans and noncreolized Britons, with the latter coming out on top.
Immediately below the British were the mulattos, a mixed race group that resulted from unions between black Africans and white Europeans. Mulattos were lighter in shade than the masses of black Africans, and on that basis distinguished themselves from the latter. They developed complex ideologies of shade to legitimate their claims to higher status.
These ideologies of shade paralleled in many ways British ideologies of white supremacy. Next in this hierarchy were the Portuguese— twenty-five hundred of whom migrated as workers from Madeira between and because of a severe famine. Many established small businesses and joined the ranks of the mulatto middle class.
The British never really considered Portuguese as whites and so they were not allowed into their ranks. Among Portuguese Antiguans and Barbudans, status differences move along a continuum of varying degrees of assimilation into the Anglicized practices of the dominant group. Below the Portuguese were the Middle Easterners, who began migrating to Antigua and Barbuda around the turn of the twentieth century.
Starting as itinerant traders, they soon worked their way into the middle strata of the society. Although Middle Easterners came from a variety of areas in the Middle East, as a group they are usually referred to as Syrians. Fifth and finally were the Afro-Antiguans and Barbudans who were located at the bottom of this hierarchy.
Forced to "emigrate" as slaves, Africans started arriving in Antigua and Barbuda in large numbers during the s. Very quickly they came to constitute the majority of the population. As they entered this hierarchy, Africans were profoundly racialized. This racialization biologized African identities, dehumanizing and deculturing them in the process. As Negroes, it was the body and particularly its skin color that emerged as the new signifiers of identity. As a result, Afro-Antiguans and Barbudans were reinscribed in a dehumanized and racialized discourse that established their inferiority, and hence the legitimacy of their earlier enslavement and later exploitation as wage laborers.
In the last decade, Spanish-speaking immigrants from the Dominican Republic and Afro-Caribbea immigrants from Guyana and Dominica have been added to this ethnic mosaic.
They have entered at the bottom of the hierarchy and it is still too early to predict what their patterns of assimilation and social mobility will be.
Food in Daily Life. Antigua and Barbuda has long imported most of its food, so it is not surprising that the food eaten by Antiguans and Barbudans consists of creole dishes or specialties that reflect the cuisine of the parent cultures. In recent years, there has been a strong invasion of American fast-food chains, such as Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Among the more established creole specialties of Antigua and Barbuda are rice pudding, salt fish and antrobers eggplant; the national breakfast , bull foot soup, souse, maw, goat water, cockle clam water, conch water, and Dukuna. The salted cod used in making the national breakfast is not a local fish.
It is an import from the United States and Canada that has been imported since before the revolt of the American colonies. Major Industries. Sugar dominated the economy of Antigua and Barbuda for much of its history. The period of sugar dominance began in the s after the failure of attempts to make money from tobacco. Between and , Antigua and Barbuda emerged as a classic sugar colony.
Because of its exclusive specialization in sugar, the economy was not very diverse. Consequently, it imported a lot, including much of its food from the American colonies and Britain. After , the economy entered a long period of decline that ended almost two centuries later in The revolt of the American colonies , the suspension of the British slave trade , the British vote to end slavery , and the British conversion to free trade all combined to destroy the foundations of the sugar-based economy.
The American revolution took away Antigua and Barbuda's cheap food supplies, the changes in British slave policies cut off its labor supplies, while the changes in trade policy took away its guaranteed market. The result was a decline from which sugar never really recovered, along with the need for a new leading sector. Antigua's historic windmills are remnants of the island's one-time role as a major sugar producer. Concerted efforts at industrialization in the s and s failed.
Attracted to Antigua and Barbuda's many beaches, white sands, and sunny climate, wealthy Americans found it a great place to vacation. Out of this demand, tourism emerged as the new leading and rapidly growing sector of the economy. In tourist arrivals totaled 12,; by , on the eve of sugar's demise, they had risen to 67, In tourist arrivals reached , The impact of tourism on the growth of the national economy has been significant.
In the hotel and restaurant sector accounted for 7. By , the figure had doubled to 14 percent, where it remained into the twenty-first century.
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