The country of Antigua and Barbuda is made of two main islands, Antigua and Barbuda, located about 25 miles from each other. Barbuda is a low, flat island that is 62 square miles big, with a population of about 1250. Antigua is hilly, 108 square miles big, and home to 72,000 people. Antigua also has several little satellite islands surrounding it very close to the mainland.

Remains have been found on Antigua that indicate that a hunting/gathering Amerindian people group inhabited the islands prior to the Arawaks. These remains include tools made of shell and stone that are quite different than the typical Arawak tools. Once again, we get conflicting information on who they were and dates of arrival from every source we check. It is known for certain that Arawaks lived on the island of Antigua. It is also known that the Arawaks grew black pineapple (extra small pineapples), corn, sweet potatoes, chiles, guava, tobacco, and cotton. It is believed that the Arawaks introduced tobacco farming and hammocks to the world. It is believed that they were run off the island by the Caribs.

Christopher Columbus landed on Antigua in 1493, and named it Santa Maria de la Antigua after a church in Seville, Spain. Early attempts by Europeans to settle the island failed due to the Caribs’ excellent defenses, but the English finally succeeded in doing so in 1632. The earliest settlers grew primarily indigo and tobacco.

In 1674, Christopher Codrington established the first sugar plantation on the island. Sugar production proved to be a cash cow, and within 25 years, tons of slaves had been imported to work the Antigua’s sugar cane fields and the island’s central valley had been deforested to make more farmland. As an FYI, sugar was so successful that throughout most of the Caribbean many farmers switched to sugar farming and soon sugar became the backbone of most of the islands’ economies. Antigua alone had 150 sugar processing plants by the mid-1700’s.

In 1685 Codrington leased the nearby island of Barbuda from the English government for an annual fee of one fattened sheep per year. He grew livestock and root crops for food for his plantation workers on Antigua. He also used Barbuda as a private hunting ground. The Barbudans were not closely supervised and maintained a tough, independent spirit. The slaves existed through cooperative efforts in fishing, farming and hunting.

In 1723, someone finally recognized how ideal of a location English and Falmouth Harbors, located directly next to one another on the south side of Antigua, were for ships. They both are deep water bays that provide excellent protection from hurricanes, have immediate access to the trade winds, and are easily defensible. English Harbor dockyard was built, and it became Britain’s main naval station in the eastern Caribbean.

All slaves within the British Empire were emancipated in 1834. In Barbuda, the newly freed slaves for the most part stayed put and continued to live in the same communal manner they had been living in all along. In Antigua, though, the newly freed had it tougher. Since there was no industry, the former slaves were still economically dependent upon the plantation owners. Unfortunately, the bottom had dropped out of the sugar market shortly before emancipation, so there wasn’t much work available for the former slaves. (Apparently, the Antiguans weren’t smart enough to switch to rum production like their neighbors on Guadeloupe.) Wages were poor and working conditions were terrible. Former slaves moved off the plantations and crowded into shantytowns and properties held by the church.

Things didn’t really start to get better until World War II, when Antigua underwent a military related construction boom. After the war, they actively developed their tourist industry. Both helped to spur economic growth. In 1945, a man named Vere Cornwall Bird was elected to the Antiguan colonial legislature. Bird only had a primary school education. He continued to stay active in the government. In 1967, Antigua & Barbuda received a measure of self-government within the UK umbrella as an Associated State within the Commonwealth. Barbuda did not want to be tied to Antigua, but England railroaded Barbuda into the alliance. Bird was elected the first Premier of Antigua & Barbuda, which is equivalent to being a president or prime minister. Once Bird was in office, he put his family members in key positions and managed to maintain power (for the most part), despite scandal after scandal.
The islands of Antigua & Barbuda achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1981. They remain part of the Commonwealth, with Queen Elizabeth II as their official queen. Bird was elected the first official Prime Minister, and continued to be mired in scandals, including one involving smuggling weapons to a drug cartel and another one involving drug smuggling. In 1994, Vere stepped down and his son, Lester, was elected to replace him.

Barbuda runs itself autonomously from Antigua for the most part. Unlike Antigua, on Barbuda, there is no private land ownership. Barbudan land is held communally, as it always has been. The Barbudan economy is based on selling sand and fishing, and they are not interested in developing industry, including the tourist industry, like Antigua has. Barbuda is the least visited island in the Caribbean. There has been quite a bit of conflict with the Antiguan government over Barbuda’s disinterest in development. Several schemes have been dreamed up and approved by the government without consulting the Barbudans, such as a desalinization plant and some resorts. The Barbudans fought these projects tooth and nail and succeeded in getting them stopped.

In 2004, the Birds were finally voted out of office. The Birds apparently took many pertinent records and all the funds, leaving the new government to start from scratch. Interestingly, Antigua is the base for some internet gambling sites and the new government is currently trying to fight the US ban on internet gambling through the World Trade Organization.