Country: Barbados

Group: Bajan

Date Finalized: 10/30/2020

Team: Colleen Clauss (lead), Zeenat Hammond, Alexa Hager

Substantial evidence from reliable sources supports that Bajan, or Afro-Barbadians, have experienced forced labor. It is unclear if this group is experiencing forced labor in Barbados today.

According to the CIA’s World Factbook, 92.4% of the population of Barbados is of African descent (CIA, n.d.). The British settled Barbados in 1627 as England’s first experimental tropical agricultural export colony (CIA, n.d.; Watson, 2011). They first cultivated tobacco and then sugar using indentured white laborers from England and then (as the cost of using indentured laborers rose) African slaves. Many died on the journey from Africa to Barbados and on the sugar plantations where they were forced to work, resulting in continued importation of slaves (Watson, 2011). Watson (2011) states that “It is estimated that between 1627 to 1807, some 387,000 Africans were shipped to the island against their will, in overcrowded, unsanitary ships.” These people came through the Gold Coast, modern-day Ghana, and Nigeria, and were primarily from the following ethnic groups: Asante, Ewe, Fon and Fante, Yoruba, Efik, Igbo and Ibibio (Watson, 2011). Especially during the 1600s and early 1700s, many were sold as slaves to other regions, “re-exported to other slave owning colonies, either in the West Indies or to North America” (Watson, 2011). Slavery was abolished in Barbados in 1834 and Barbados became completely independent of England in 1966 (CIA, n.d.). This is a case of forced labor because English colonizers (another ethnic group) forced Bajan people to work against their will within the territory of Barbados, and exported them as slaves to other areas of the Western hemisphere.

The data quality is rated as a 2, because detailed information was found at credible sources (a U.S. government source and a well-established news source, BBC), but not in peer reviewed journals. The news source may be biased because it is based in the formerly colonizing country. Neither source has details about the present-day conditions of forced labor for the group.

Sources

  1. CIA (n.d.). Central America: Barbados. The World Factbook – Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved October 23, 2020, from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bb.html
  2. Watson, K. (2011, February 17). Slavery and Economy in Barbados. BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/barbados_01.shtml