Barbuda: a Caribbean Island in Transition Andrew Sluyter Louisiana State University, [email protected]

Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons Faculty Publications Department of Geography & Anthropology 2012 Barbuda: A Caribbean Island In Transition Andrew Sluyter Louisiana State University, [email protected] Amy E. Potter Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/geoanth_pubs Recommended Citation Sluyter, Andrew and Potter, Amy E., "Barbuda: A Caribbean Island In Transition" (2012). Faculty Publications. 19. http://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/geoanth_pubs/19 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Geography & Anthropology at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Barbuda: A Caribbearc Island In Trnnsition by Amy E. Potter snd Andreu,t Sluyter Photographs by tlrc authors . Rofr'wared A'LANTIC ACEAN Mans,ores =0 1 2n, a 1 2 3km Figure 2. Map of BarbtLdn highlighting locn- tions mentioned throughout the essny. thorny shrubland on a torrid summer day tn 2007, we entered a grassv clearing. A of limestone blocks Figure 1. One of the stockruells and its enclosing stonewnll. walled enclosure, built and nearly two meters in height, occupied the center of the clearing. Inside was a well with a drinking trough built into one Therein lies the quandary faced not exploitation from all quarters (Robert side, also made of limestone blocks. The o.rly by Barbuda but by islands Coram 1989: 86) stze oI the trough indicated that someone throughout the Caribbean. Barbudans had once invested corrsiderable labor to have only to look at Antigua to see an Before arriving on the island of Bar- build an enclosure for large stock that island whose resources are controlled buda, we had read much about this place. included cattle, all of which now lav lar- in large measure by foreigners an There is an extensive literafure set not only gely abandoned (Figure 1). island held in virtual captivity by for- on Barbuda but also its sister-island Anti- Part of that field season on Barbuda, eign banks. And Barbuda is pristine gua, a southerly neighbor in the Leeward supported through the American Geo- and undeveloped. But the economic Lesser Antilles. These two isiands were for- graphical Society's program of Bowman needs of Barbuda make it vulnerable to mer British colonies that together would Expeditions, was devoted to the intensive become the independent counhy of Antigua study of that enclosed stockr,r'ell and five and Barbuda in 1981. None of the academic others, all largely defunct but some better Editors'Note: All photogrnphs this articLe utere for literature, A Srnnll Place by the novelist and preserved tl-ran others (Figures 2, 3). tnken hq tlte nutlLors betroeen 2007 and 2012 except Antiguan-born r.vriter Jamaica Kincaid, or Enslaved Barbudans, the ancestors of many for Figures 1 ond 5, whiclt were used bt1 permission Caribbenn Tirne Bontb bv the journalist Robert of the island's 1,500 current residents had and taken bq Da'oitl R. Harris, Professor Emeritus a.t Coram had prepared us, hor,r,ever, for what built those wells as part of a system of Uniaersity College LorLdon, during lis fieldiLtork in we found during that field season. open-range cattle herding. That colonial the early 1960s for ltis dissertatiort, direcled by lames I. Parsons of tlrc Depnrtntent of Geogrnplt.y of the After hiking a couple of kilometers economv established the system of commu- UnittersiU o.f CaLtfornia at Berkeley. from the island's single village through the na1 land tenure, and we sought to under- 140 Focus on Geography Volume 55, Number 4 Figure 3. The remnants of Spring Well. Figure 4. Boats anchored and under repnir at Codrington jetty in the 1960s. Cotrrfesv Dauid R. Harris. stand further the relationship between Our fieldwork updated and The origins of the communal land ten- those commons and transformations of expanded on some aspects of that previ- ure, cattle herding, and the transnational land and life since others had conducted ous scholarship. One of us focused on community all date to colonial times, fieldwork on the island nearly a half-cen- cattle herding and land tenure (Sluyter beginning in the late seventeenth century. tury before (Potter and Sluyter 2010). 2009, 2012). The other used that initial The British Crown leased the island to the Despite the island's general obscurity, field season to lay the groundwork for a Codrington family for nearly 200 years, a number of geographers and anthropolo- doctoral dissertation on the relationships from the 1680s through 1870. The island's gists have studied various aspects of among: 1) the recent transformation of thin soils and lack of surface water pre- Barbudan land and life. David R. Harris land tenure; 2) aspects of island society, cluded plantation agriculture, but its (1965) investigated vegetation history for and 3) the Barbudan transnationai com- shrublands did provide adequate forage his dissertation in the 1960s (Figures 4, 5). munity, which has rnajor nodes in New for livestock. The Codringtons used their David Lowenthal and Colin Clarke (1977) York City and Leicester, Elrgland (Potter lease to produce oxen for the sugar planta- debunked the myth that the island served 2011). Potter's dissertation and subse- tions of neighboring islands, principally as a slave-breeding colony. Riva Berleant- quent fieldwork incorporating participant Antigua, and beef for the Royal Navy. Schiller (1977) revealed much about its observatiory mental mapping, archival Since the Codringtons leased the entire social and economic relations. And David work, and semi-structured interviert,s island, they allowed the cattle to range R. Watters (1980) conducted archaeological spanned four summers (2007 2010), r,r,ith freely through the unfenced shrubland. research on both pre-historic and historic her most recent visit being in the sum- The enslaved Africans that the Codring- sites. mer of 2012. tons kept on Barbuda built the walled wells to act as cattle traps. During the dry season, as surface ponds dried up, the cattle would come to the wells to drink, and the herders trapped them bv closing the gates. The herders would then castrate and release the bull calves and ship the mature animals to Antigua, either as oxen to work on sugar plantations or as beef for the Admiralty victualling yard at Nelson's Dockyard in English Harbour. The enslaved population of Barbuda grew to some 500 by the time of emancipation in 1834 (Figures 6, 7). Barbuda's distinctive social and envi- ronmental relations were mainly established during the period of the Codrington lease. Even before emancipation, Barbu- dans developed a sense of common pos- session of the island. The Codringtons were, after the early eighteenth century, absentee leaseholders u'ho lived at their Dodington Estate in England, Iocated Figure 5, BenzerWeLl and its enclosing stonewall in the 1960s. Courtesy Dnoid R. Horris. between Bristol and Gloucester. A single Winter 2012 Focus on GeograPhY 141 Figure 6. Highland House, nicknnnrcd Willy Bob, built in the 1700s cLt Figure 7. Ri-oer Fort, u Mnrtello touter tlnt defended tlrc main nnchorage the island's highest point ns a retreat for the Codrington t'nmily. on tlrc soutlr coast. t'jia;,=t:'::.!,e , J:..:...: !.=.a. :.1;a a,i::i:1!:::: :i Figure 9. Spintl lobster, noLa tlrc islnntl's principal export. Figure 8, Go-oenmrent HotLse, lnme of the warden during late coloninl rule, nolLi boarded u1t and the Colonial Office exercised direct control largely in disrepnir. over the colony from his residence in Gov- ernment FIouse (Figure B). The entire employee, sometimes married and Barbudans, not only from ox and beef island was cro\t/n land, and Barbudans sometimes with assistants, managed Bar- sales but from the salvage of ships that became crown tenants in common rather buda. The letters between them and the wrecked on the islar.rd's reefs. With than the emancipated employees of a Codringtons, preserved in the National emancipation, the enslaved Barbudans leaseholder. They were supposed to pay Archive of Antigua ar.rd Barbuda, provide became the landless employees of the an annual rent of twenty-four cents, but many insights into life on the island leaseholder, the Codringtons, until 1870 those payments never took p1ace. They during colonial times. One such letter, and a series of others thereafter. Some considered themselves the communal from R. Jarritt to Christopher Bethell-Cod- left for other islands in the British Carib- owners of the island, but the Crown con- rington in 1820, cautioned that Barbuclans bean, early pioneers in what would even- sidered them squatters. According to Des- "acknowledge no master, and believe the tually become a Barbudan transnational mond V. Nicholson (1997: 27), one of the Island belongs to themselves." The community. principal historians of Antigua and Barbu- Codringtons nonetheless managed to The Crown stopped leasing out the da, "The whole issue should have been derive great profit from the labor of those island in 1895, and a warden appointed by clarified by the Government, but Barbuda I42 Focus on Geography Volurne 55, Number 4 ::,::g,,:X :-| j::.1:.,_i ;i.:t:i. t ! Figure 11. A morning's cntclr to develop tourist resorts along its beautiful beaches. The lack of resolution to that dis- pute largely precluded tourism develop- ment, other than a few small luxury resorts. The largely Antiguan-initiated K-Club on the south coast, for example, hosted guests such as Princess Diana. In the meantime, the market for Barbudan beef had declined to the point island's cattle runners largely Figure L0. Boats utith outboard motors at Codrington jetty. that the stopped catching cattle at the walled wells.

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