Barbados

Barbados, situated just east of the Caribbean Sea, is an independent island nation in the western Atlantic Ocean. The country lies in the southern Caribbean region, where is considered a part of the Lesser Antilles island-chain. Its closest island neighbors are Saint Vincent, Saint Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago—with which Barbados now shares a fixed official maritime boundary—and also the South American mainland.

British sailors landed on Barbados in 1625. At the time Portuguese had left island for South America leaving the island uninhabited. From the arrival of the first British settlers in 1627–1628 until independence in 1966, Barbados was under uninterrupted British control. From 1958 to 1962, Barbados was one of the ten members of the West Indies Federation, an organization doomed by nationalistic attitudes and by the fact that its members, as colonies of Britain, held limited legislative power. After the Federation dissolved, Barbados negotiated its own independence at a constitutional conference with the United Kingdom and finally became an independent state within the Commonwealth of Nations in 1966.

Close to 90 percent of all Barbadians are of African descent, mostly descendants of the slave laborers on the sugar plantations. Barbados has one of the highest standards of living and literacy rates worldwide. Barbados's human development index ranking is consistently among the top 50 in the world. For example, in 2006, it was ranked 31st in the world, and third in the Americas, behind Canada and the United States.