Barbados First

This book continues the pictorial history of Barbados entitled
Bygone Barbados, which my late cousin Ann Watson Yates wrote in 1998. Its intent, through the use of pictorial images, is to give the reader some understanding of the socio-economic and political changes which this island has undergone in the period 1920 to 1970.

The book is set within the broad theme of social and political evolution, hence its subtitle ” The Years of Change”.

Changes have therefore been documented, but the careful reader will also observe that so too have been continuities. The benefits of modernization are depicted, but so too are the attendant costs, as a generation obsessed with the need to change the so-called colonial landscape and stamp its own authority and create its own monuments, proved in many cases to be unreliable stewards of the built past, through benign neglect or worse, even deliberate destruction.

By sheer coincidence, this book appears in the same year the 375th anniversary of the founding of Bridgetown is being celebrated. It begins therefore with a pictorial tribute to Bridgetown and then continues with its depiction of past socio-economic and cultural landscapes of Barbados.

Karl Watson,
St. Anne’s Garrison, St. Michael, Barbados
June 2003

Barbados First – The Years of Change

204 Pages
Published by Karl Watson
ISBN 976-8078-47-2

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