“Barbados has a fascinating past,” says a brightly-colored brochure from Hilton Grand Vacations featuring the island’s blue-green waters and beautiful sand beaches. “Wherever you go, you’ll be pacing through history.” The brochure advises visitors to take the “rum tour” and visit the St. Nicholas Abbey Plantation, built during the height of Barbodos’ wealth in the seventeenth century.
The brochure does mention the “painful history” of slave labor, which, it explains, can be reviewed at the Museum & Historical Society. Then it lists where to eat and the best beaches.
How lightly the past sometimes weighs on the present!
I have just written a paper about Barbados for a history class. Barbados’s history was grim. Barbados was the first English colony to take advantage of the rising English demand for sugar. By 1680 Barbardos was the richest of England’s colonies. It was the best of times and the worst of times, depending on who you were.