40 years on, Barbados still has its place in the sun

In the realm of nationhood, four decades is considered the political version of a newborn. Yet over that period, the sun-baked Caribbean island of Barbados, which this year celebrates 40 years of independence from Britain, has evolved into a surprisingly mature society.

The island's 270,000 people, 90 per cent of them of African descent, are ruled by an independent parliamentary democracy closely patterned after the British system. At 365 years, it is the third-oldest parliament in the world and has delivered the island one of the highest standards of living in the world.

Education and health care are free and universal. The adult literacy rate is an astonishing 99 per cent, medical standards are world class, and crime rates have not increased in 20 years.

Freedom House, an institution that monitors human rights globally, has consistently cited the island as one of the freest nations in the world. And last year, the Barbadian stock market was the best performing in the Caribbean.

All this has made Barbados the envy of the region. Part of the secret of the island's success has been its stability. While the rest of the Caribbean was relentlessly fought over by the French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese, Barbados was under uninterrupted British control from 1627 until independence in 1966.

For three centuries, the British used the sun-splashed island as a 'single-crop colony'. Sugar cane meant vast fortunes for a few, but slave labour for many thousands. Most slaves were African, but as many as a third of Ulster's indigenous Celts were forcibly shipped to Barbados by Oliver Cromwell. These poor whites, who came to be called 'red legs', soon allied themselves with the larger African slave population and often inter-married.