The origin of the name Barbados is controversial. It was the Portuguese that were the first European nation to conquer (discover) and name the island. As early as 1511, the island is referred to as Ilha dos Barbados (island of the bearded ones) in an official Portuguese document. It is a matter of conjecture whether the word "bearded" refers to the long, hanging roots of the bearded fig-tree, indigenous to the island, to bearded Amerindians occupying the island, or to the foam spraying over the outlying reefs giving the impression of a beard. In 1519, a map produced by the Genoese mapmaker Vesconte de Maggiola showed and named Barbados in its correct position north of Tobago.

British presence was established by sailors who landed on Barbados in 1625 at the site of present-day Holetown on the Caribbean coast found the island uninhabited apart from the feral pigs which were left behind from the Portuguese. From the arrival of the first British settlers in 1627–1628 until independence in 1966, Barbados was under uninterrupted British control. Nevertheless, Barbados always enjoyed a large measure of local autonomy.

Starting in the 1620s, an increasing number of black slaves were brought to the isle. 5000 locals died of fever in 1647, and hundreds of slaves were executed by Royalist planters during the English Civil War in the 1640s. Large numbers of Celtic people, mainly from Ireland and Scotland, went to Barbados as indentured servants. Over the next several centuries the Celtic population was used as a buffer between the Anglo-Saxon plantation owners and the larger African population, variously serving as members of the Colonial militia and playing a strong role as allies of the larger African slave population in a long string of colonial rebellions. As well, in 1659, the English shipped many Irishmen and Scots off to Barbados as slaves, and King James II and others of his dynasty also sent Scots and English off to the isle: for example, after the crushing of the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685. The modern descendants of this original slave population are sometimes derisively referred to as Red Legs, or locally 'ecky becky', and are some of the poorest inhabitants of modern Barbados. There has also been large-scale intermarriage between the African and Celtic populations on the islands and many Bajans are of European Creole descent. There are also rather a lot of Jewish people on this Island, the wealthy that could afford to get away from the Holocaust and their siblings. This is the reason some people mistake 'white Bajans' with the Celtic (aforementioned) and Jewish communities.

With the increased implementation of slave codes, which created differential treatment between Africans and the white settlers, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. Black or slave codes were implemented in 1661, 1676, 1682, and 1688. In response to these codes, several slave rebellions were attempted or planned during this time, but none succeeded. However, an increasingly repressive legal system caused the gap between the treatment of typically white indentured servants and black slaves to widen. Imported slaves became much more attractive for the rich planters who would increasingly dominate the island not only economically but also politically. Some have speculated that, because the Africans could withstand tropical diseases and the climate much better than the white slave population, the white population decreased. This is inconsistent with the fact that many poor whites simply migrated to neighbouring islands and remained in tropical climates. Nevertheless, as those poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so, and with the increased importation of African slaves, Barbados turned from mainly Celtic in the seventeenth century to overwhelmingly black by the nineteenth century.

Barbados eventually had one of the world's biggest sugar industries after migrant Brazilian Jews introduced the sugarcane to the island in the 1800s this quickly replaced Tobacco plantations on the islands which were previously the main export.As the sugar industry developed into its main commercial enterprise, Barbados was divided into large plantation estates that replaced the smallholdings of the early British settlers. Some of the displaced farmers moved to British colonies in North America, most notably South Carolina, Panama and British Guiana. To work the plantations, West Africans were transported and enslaved on Barbados and other Caribbean islands. The British abolished the slave trade in 1807. In 1816, the continuation of slavery caused the largest major slave rebellion in the island's history. 20,000 slaves from over 70 plantations rebelled. Whites were driven off of plantations, yet mass killings were avoided. Later termed “Bussa’s Rebellion” after the slave ranger Bussa who with his assistants hated slavery, found the treatment of slaves on Barbados to be “intolerable,” and believed the political climate in Britain made the time ripe to peacefully negotiate with planters for freedom . Bussa’s Rebellion failed. 120 died in combat or were immediately executed; another 144 were brought to trial and executed; remaining rebels were shipped off the island . Slavery was abolished in the British Empire 18 years later in 1834. In Barbados and the rest of the British West Indian colonies, full emancipation from slavery was preceded by an apprenticeship period that lasted four years.

(Source: Wikipedia: History of Barbados) 

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