Flag of the Day – Barbados

The Babados flag consists of a triband of two bands of ultramarine, which are said to stand for the ocean surrounding the country and the sky, separated by a golden middle band, which represents the sand. A black trident head, commonly called the broken trident, is centred in the golden band, and the fact that the staff is missing is significant. The trident symbol was taken from Barbados’ colonial badge, where the trident of Poseidon is shown with Britannia holding it. The broken lower part symbolises a symbolic break from its status as a colony. 

According to wikipedia, the first English to visit Barbados arrived on a ship poetically named, Olive Blossom.  It arrived in Barbados on 14 May 1625, and the island was claimed in the name of King James I.

Filling a void left by the collapse of the Hapsburg dynasty in Spain, the first permanent settlers arrived from England in 1627 (which happens to be the year Swedes first arrived in Delaware).  Anyhoo – the English established slave plantations in Barbados.  By the 1750’s large plantations muscled out smaller operations and put the island on an industrial sugar cane cultivation footing similar to the lucrative French operations in Hati.

Sugar cane cultivation was brutal, as wikipedia dryly notes: “Life expectancy of slaves was short and replacements were purchased annually.”  By 1660, Barbados generated more trade than all the other English colonies combined, and by 1731 Bridgetown, the capital, was one of the three largest cities in English America, the other two being Boston and Port Royal, Jamaica.

Barbados became independent from the United Kingdom in November 1966, but keep the Queen as the head of state and a London based privy council more than three centuries after English settlers arrived and turned the island into a wealthy sugar colony based on the work of hundreds of thousands of African slaves.

In recent decades, the island has begun distancing itself from its colonial past.  Last year, Barbados announced plans to stop being a constitutional monarchy and followed through by removing Queen Elizabeth as the Head of State yesterday.  Sadlty, the Queen survived the indignity.

The future King Charles noted,  “From the darkest days of our past and the appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history, the people of this island forged their path with extraordinary fortitude,”  which was a nice thing to say, I suppose.