Barbados

Through the ages

Rivals in history

The kingdoms, empires and states Barbados fought or stood against, from the first to today.

1. 🇬🇧 Commonwealth of England1650 to 1652

   Royalist Barbados defied the English Parliament after the execution of Charles I. A parliamentary fleet blockaded the island in 1651, and it surrendered in January 1652 under terms that kept its assembly and laws.

2. 🇳🇱 Dutch Republic1665 to 1667

   During the Second Anglo-Dutch War, Admiral Michiel de Ruyter attacked the shipping in Carlisle Bay in April 1665. The guns of Bridgetown drove his fleet off, and the island stayed English.

3. 🇫🇷 Kingdom of France1689 to 1815

   In the long Anglo-French wars, Barbados was the staging base for British attacks on the French islands, including the conquest of Guadeloupe in 1759 and Martinique in 1762. The island itself was never invaded.

4. 🇬🇧 British Empire1816 to 1966

   Barbadians resisted the colonial order from Bussa's rebellion of 1816 to the uprising of 1937. Labour leaders won the vote for all adults in 1950, and Barbados negotiated its independence from Britain in 1966.

5. 🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago2004 to 2006

   Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago quarrelled over flying fish grounds and their sea boundary. Barbados took the case to an arbitral tribunal in 2004, and its 2006 award drew the line between the two countries.

Today

Barbados now

Barbados was uninhabited when first settled by the British in 1627. Enslaved Africans worked the sugar plantations established on the island, which initially dominated the Caribbean sugar industry. By 1720, Barbados was no longer a dominant force within the sugar industry, having been surpassed by the Leeward Islands and Jamaica. Slavery was abolished in 1834. The Barbadian economy remained heavily dependent on sugar, rum, and molasses production through most of the 20th century.

Capital

Bridgetown

Government

parliamentary republic; a Commonwealth realm

Head of government

Mia Mottley

Head of state

Sandra Mason

Languages

Bajan Creole, English

Area

431 km²

Through time

Then and now

• Population282,3002023 · 209,900 in 1950
• Life expectancy76.2 years2023 · 53.6 years in 1950
• GDP per person$11,5452022 · $3,390 in 1950
• Living in cities60%2025 · 40% in 1950
• Literacy99%1970 · 93% in 1950
• Political regimeLiberal democracy2025 · Closed autocracy in 1950
• Military alliancesNone of these2024 · None of these in 1950
• War deathsNone2025

Population: HYDE 3.3, Gapminder and UN WPP. GDP per capita: Maddison Project Database 2023. Urban share: UN WPP. Life expectancy: Riley, HMD, UN WPP. Literacy: OWID historical estimates, World Bank, UNESCO. Military spending: SIPRI. War deaths: UCDP. Political regime: V-Dem, Regimes of the World. All via Our World in Data (CC BY 4.0). Alliances and organization memberships: compiled by Atlas. Satellites in orbit: CelesTrak SATCAT. Modern borders, backcast.

Relations

Close partners and tensions

Summarised from World Bank and Wikipedia data, updated 23 October 2026.