BARBADOS, FLAG OF

vertically striped national flag of blue-yellow-blue with a central black trident head. It has a width-to-length ratio of 2 to 3. The colonial flag badge of Barbados showed a fanciful scene in which an enormous shell with paddle wheels drawn by sea horses carried a king. The monarch held a trident, a classical symbol of the sea associated in ancient Greek mythology with the god Poseidon (the Roman Neptune). With the approach of independence, Barbados sponsored a competition among its citizens for a new national flag. Grantley Prescod, an art teacher and native Barbadian, looked at existing symbols for inspiration. The Barbados seal suggested to him the use of the distinctive trident. After several varying sketches, Prescod arrived at the design that he finally submitted. This winning choice had equal vertical stripes of blue-yellow-blue for sea, sand, and sky, with the trident head represented in the centre in black. It thus contained the essential elements for good flag design according to vexillographic standards. It was unique, simple, distinctive, symbolic of the area it was to represent, and easy to draw or manufacture. The design was approved by the College of Arms in London and by the Barbadian government. It was first hoisted on November 30, 1966, when the country became independent. Whitney Smith History Little of the island's prehistory is known, but archaeological investigation indicates that Amerindians probably lived on the island from about AD 500 to 1500. The first contact with Europeans may have occurred in the early 16th century when Spaniards visited Barbados on one of their raids for slave labourers. By the mid-16th centurylargely because of the island's small size, remoteness, and depopulationthe Spanish had effectively abandoned their claims to its possession. British rule English colonists established a settlement in 1627 without challenge from either Amerindians or Spaniards. The early period of English settlement was marked by the insecurity resulting from infrequent provision of supplies from Europe and the difficulty in establishing a profitable export crop. This was complicated by bitter squabbles over the claims of rival lords proprietors and over the question of allegiance to either king or Parliament, resulting in the entrenchment of representative governmental institutions by the 1660s. The search for a profitable export crop ended in the 1640s when Dutch assistance enabled the colonists to convert from tobacco and cotton cultivation to sugar production. This decision had momentous social, economic, and political consequences. Sugar needed a larger labour force than was available and larger farm units than had previously existed. The importation of African slaves was intensified, and the small farms were amalgamated into plantations. The character of the population changed: in the early 1640s there were probably 37,000 whites and 6,000 blacks; by 1684 there were about 20,000 whites and 46,000 blacks; and, when slavery was abolished in 1834, there were 15,000 whites and 88,000 nonwhites. Sugar was a scarce and therefore valuable commodity in European markets, and Barbadian sugar planters, particularly in the 17th century, reaped huge profits out of the early lead that the island established in sugar production. Increasing wealth brought consolidation of political power for a planter elite. Though slaves continually resisted their bondage, the effective authoritarian power of planter-slaveowners ensured that, apart from the 1816 slave rebellion, there was no effective threat to their control. Sugar remained king in Barbados even through the 19th-century crises caused by slave emancipation, free trade, and beet sugar competition. This was mainly because a dense population provided cheap labour, and because the white plantermerchant elite's political power ensured that government resources would be used to rescue the industry in any emergency. The workers therefore carried the burden in low wages and minimal social services. This situation encouraged emigration (often frustrated by the elite) and occasional, futile political protests such as the Confederation Riots of 1876. By the 1930s the social and political pressures from below could no longer be contained. Population increase, the closing of emigration outlets, the economic effects of the worldwide depression, and the spread of socialist ideology and the black nationalist movement of the Jamaican leader Marcus Garvey had created conditions for a labour revolt. By then, middle-class reformers had begun to agitate against the restricted political franchise (the right to vote was limited to males and restricted by income and property qualifications) and the inadequate social services. Out of the labour disturbances of 1937 emerged a clear challenge to the existing order. The British government's response assisted this successful challenge. The West Indies Royal Commission (Moyne Commission), dispatched in 1938 to report on social and economic conditions in the British West Indies, endorsed some of the political and social reforms that were advocated by the leaders of the new mass organizations, particularly the full legalization of trade unions and the extension of the political franchise. The implementation of these reforms during the 1940s provided the essential base for the institutionalization of mass political organizations, which became the principal means through which the elite's political power was curtailed. In Barbados black political leaders gained ascendancy by 1944, the same year in which women were granted the right to vote; universal adult suffrage was adopted in 1951, and full internal self-government was achieved in 1961.