In this episode Hema discusses a famous person with roots in Barbados, gives a brief history of people of Barbados - from the Indigenous population through the Portuguese and Spanish settlements, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and indentured servants - and how these points in history affect current day culture. Mireille shares some of the elements of British culture that still exists in Barbados today, the national dish of Barbados, and some more delicious recipes.
Resources
https://barbados.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_fish
https://www.britannica.com/place/Barbados
https://www.slavevoyages.org/
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/barbados/
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Barbados
https://www.visitbarbados.org/
https://www.strictlyfactspod.com/
https://www.gov.bb/Visit-Barbados/demographics
https://stats.gov.bb/census/
https://slaveryandremembrance.org/
Who Do You Think You Are?
Recipes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXQJ00A3Zek
Hema: Hi, I'm Hema
Chef Mireille: and I am Mireille.
Hema Hi Mireille
Chef Mireille: Hi
Hema: We ended last week with a little bit of a teaser to describe the Caribbean country we're gonna be talking about today. We said that this country removed Great Britain as their head of state and became an independent republic in November of 2021.
Chef Mireille: Are you just as excited to learn what this country is as I am?
It's Barbados.
Hema: I'm gonna start with the history and a little bit about the people and the culture, as we did last week. And then you're gonna go into the food, which is one of my favorite parts.
To start my research, I did a Google search to see what Barbados is known for, because this is really what the average person, when they're thinking about Barbados is going to learn about the country.
And this simple web search gave me a few top things to know beaches, Harrison's cave, the limestone caves, and mount gay rum.
Chef Mireille: , I have definitely had some Mount gay in my lifetime. It has some spice notes in there and that's probably my rum of choice I go to whenever I make rum Punch.
Hema: Ooh, delicious.
So let's talk about, a little bit about the people. In an episode of who do you think you are? Gwyneth Paltrow found out that she's the descendant of a woman from Barbados.
Chef Mireille: Actually I did know, 'cause I'm addicted to that show, all versions of that show.
Hema: This is what I learned about Gwyneth Paltrow and her connection to Barbados. She is a descendant of a woman named Rosemund Stout, who was born in Barbados in 1850. Rosemund's father was a. Clerk at the docks and had a pretty decent job. So they were a fairly sort of middle income family.
Unfortunately, Rosemond and her sister were orphaned and they decided in 1868 that they were going to leave Barbados for the United States. And the reason for that is there's a couple of things. There were more women than men on the island at that time, which meant that the prospects for getting married was gonna be a little bit harder.
And for a woman at that time, getting married was quite important. Also. Job opportunities for white women were in short supply because the formerly enslaved women would work in the same jobs for lower pay, which meant that the job opportunities for a white woman was a little bit harder to come by, so they left for America.
Let's start with the current population of Barbados, which is estimated to be about 301,865. Of that makeup, 92.4% is black of African descent. 3.1% is of mixed race, 2.7% white and 1.3% South Asian. Before we talk about the transatlantic slave trade, which is arguably the biggest factor in the current population and culture.
I wanna go a little bit further back and talk about who the original inhabitants of Barbados were.
Chef Mireille: Let's do it.
Hema: I think we mentioned this before, trying to find research that is not necessarily written by the settlers on the colonizers is a little bit challenging, but this is what I found.
Depending on the source, some will say that prior to the 1620s, Barbados was uninhabited. But recent archeological discoveries do show that the Arawaks and the Kallinago, who were previously referred to as Caribs lived on the island and they probably came from Venezuela.
In last week's episode, we talked about the Arawaks arriving first, , who were displaced by the Kallinago in about the 12 hundreds . So here's the question. The Portuguese sailed to the island, but by the time they arrived, there was the island inhabited. There seems to be a little bit of discrepancy.
Some say the Portuguese arrived, they gave the island the name Los Barbados, which means bearded, one named after the island's fig trees, and the fact that these fig trees looked like someone who has a beard. So possibly the Portuguese arrived, they enslaved the inhabitants, put them to work on plantations, and some say when the Portuguese arrived, the island was barren.
. It's possible that when the Spanish landed on the island first, they took part in repeated slave raids, moved on. and then the Portuguese came and the island was mostly uninhabited because the Spanish raided the island and the inhabitants took them as slaves. And then whoever was left of the indigenous people, they fled or they moved further inland.
They would avoid being captured
Chef Mireille: I can't say for a fact in Barbados, but I know many islands have what they call maroon communities, and these were communities that basically when they saw the colonizing people coming, they went and they hid out in the mountains. And while hiding out in the mountains, they formed these free communities that the colonizers knew nothing about.
Hema: And that's very possibly what happened then, right? That the , the raids came, some people left and then some people hid out. What is not disputed is that the British settlers arrived around 1625 and ruled Barbados until 1966 until independence. In around 1625 an English expedition arrived sort of to just scout out the island and assess for occupation, and they planted their flag.
They came back in 1627. a British ship arrived with 80 settlers and 10 enslaved people to really start to settle and occupy the island. Now the settlers were allocated some land and they established tobacco and cotton plantations. In the 1640s, sugarcane plantations were introduced with the assistance from the Dutch.
There are many people and many other countries who touched the island. Up until this point. The sugar plantations yielded the greatest profit over tobacco and cotton, and in order to establish and maintain these plantations, which became. The biggest source of income, that's when the slave trade was fully established.
Between 1627 and 1850, about 609,000 enslaved African people forcibly put on these ships in the transatlantic slave trade bound for Barbados, about 493,000 disembarked in Barbados.
So where did they come from? What part of Africa? Mostly West Africa, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone. Guinea Islands, Madagascar, Gambia. There are some ships according to slave voyages.org that didn't have a port specified of where they started from, but that is the region that most of these people came from.
So here's the thing that is unique to Barbados, that wasn't part of our talk in Antigua and Barbuda. To meet the plantation labor needs at this time. Not only did they have enslaved people, but indentured servitude began. White civilians could sign an agreement with plantation owners in Barbados to serve for five to seven years, and some of these people, or many of these people, came from Ireland and Scotland.
Chef Mireille: There's this discussion this whole debate about The discussion of reparations, some people want to try to compare chattel slavery to indentured servitude and make equal comparisons, but they're two different things.
Are they both bad? Absolutely. But I think it's important that there is a difference to the way indentured servants were treated compared to chattel slavery.
Hema: That's a really great point. Mireille, they both were in the sort of hierarchy of things, lesser than the plantation owners, there were many other differences, obviously in terms of rights and land ownership treatment, but that is a big one, is who was there by choice and who wasn't.
The arrival of the white civilian indentured servants to Barbados created three categories of people. In society, free, indentured and enslaved, and each category of person had different levels of power or no power.
Different levels of money and different levels of autonomy. Oftentimes these different levels of people were categorized by the color of their skin.
I know what exists in many other islands, there are even within, for example, let's just say the black race, but then there are subdivisions ,, mulatto and other variations of, of classifications like that, that give people different amounts of opportunity. Literally .Even though you may be black, depending how dark or light you are within that race or within the mixed race, you may have.
Hema: For indentured servants population began to decline, and the majority of the labor seems to have come by force from West Africa.
In the history, there was a rebellion in 1816 by the enslaved Africans in an effort to gain freedom. bUt they did not. get freedom until slavery was abolished in 1834. At that time, these newly free men continued to work in what was called an apprenticeship. So they were working without pay in exchange for a place to live, and that was their freedom.
The plantation owners and the merchants continue to dominate society, politics, and culture. And it wasn't until the 1930s that descendants of the emancipated slaves began fighting for their political rights. All of this means that the Bajan traditions today are shaped by West African culture of their ancestors.
And also with British influences, which isn't surprising given that Barbados was a colony in the British Empire for 300 plus years. Now, that doesn't mean some of the other countries that I talked about, Spain and Portugal, Ireland and Scotland didn't also have their influences in Barbados.
Now a few things to talk about in terms of culture and how the people influence current culture. Crop over, you know what that is?
Chef Mireille: Actually, I don't.
Hema: Crop over is a big summer celebration and it has its roots. In the 1780s, that was a celebration at the end of the sugar harvest.
So they worked. People worked very hard, and then at the end of the harvest, they had a big celebration. When the sugarcane industry declined crop over was no longer a thing, it was no longer celebrated. but It began to be revived in the 1970s as a celebration, but it has its roots in history in the sugar cane harvest.
Chef Mireille: and I should know that considering my mother spent a good part of her life in in Barbados, I'm gonna have a little discussion with her about that.
Hema: you need to have a word with your mom. But you know, maybe when she was there, it was in that, in-between time when
they weren't really celebrating it. A few other things that really shape the current culture or some of the things that shape the current culture in Barbados is cricket. Cricket is very popular, but where that tradition and the sport comes from.
Is the time that the British ruled the island. So the British soldiers, the plantation owners played cricket and the sport remained. The one last thing that I do wanna mention, is the Celtic Festival.
That is, that takes place in Barbados every year. This celebrates the heritage of the indentured servants who came way back when, the Irish and the Scottish. It is a current fusion of.
Indentured servants, their history and Bajan culture in music, food, and performances.
Chef Mireille: That sounds like a fun event to attend.
Hema: That's a little bit about the history of the people of the island, and a little bit about the culture and how the people and the ancestors and where people came from really affects current day culture. And Mireille, you are gonna talk about food.
Chef Mireille: Yes, I'm gonna talk about food. First of all, one thing to know, which I think our audience as they continue to follow us and listen to our episodes are gonna learn, is that I have a personal connection to a lot of Caribbean countries. And Barbados is one of them. My mother grew up in Barbados from the time she was about nine until she was about 16. My youngest aunt is a Bajan. She was born there, plus some extended family. So I really do, I think, have some insight into Bajan culture, et cetera. That's why the national Dish is something really familiar to me and something I grew up with it. One of the thing is really interesting is how Bajan cuisine is influenced by all those people that you mentioned that came there, . I think the British, like you correctly said, the British and the African have the biggest influence on the cuisine. So Barbados may not be as ethnically diverse as many of the other Caribbean islands that we're going to cover. However, they are still heavily influenced by both the Portuguese as well as the British. So there's a saying, I've often heard Bajans are more British than the British. Two things where that I think point is well illustrated is having tea several times a day and black pudding.
Now we're gonna get to the national dish. Now the national bi dish of Barbados is flying Fish and coo coo like the fungi I mentioned in last week's episode. It's basically a corn meal based savory porridge, similar to African fufu. Now, there are several variations throughout the Caribbean, \. But they are all basically this corn meal based porridge, if you like, cooked with okra. Now, corn meal is . An important grain in the Caribbean. We use it so much for every part of our meal. You can make like in Haiti we make Pain Mais which is basically a cornbread, but we call it cornbread.
It's really more of like a corn meal. Pone. There's. Cornmeal porridge, you know dumplings are often made with cornmeal, so it's one of those grains that the enslaved people had access to and it's very not very expensive. And that is, I think, one of the main reasons why it was able to be incorporated into such a variety of both sweet and savory recipes.
Like I'm sure you've had cornmeal porridge before.
Hema: You know, that's interesting. I have not
Chef Mireille: Girl, you don't know what you're missing.
Hema: I actually saw this on TikTok the other day, people talking about cornmeal porridge being a staple breakfast item in the Caribbean. I do not I've ever had a cornmeal porridge
Chef Mireille: Okay, so now let's get onto the flying fish. I guess, guess you're wondering, does the fish really fly? Do you think it flies
Hema: I mean, in a way I, I know the answer to this in a way it flies, but I will let you cover this part.
Chef Mireille: Okay, so the fish does not really fly, but actually what it does is it first picks up a lot of speed swimming at rates of about 55 miles per hour, and then it glides up in the air for distance of up to 40 meters. And while in the air the. Fish spreads. It has these pectoral wings and it gives the appearance a flying, but they don't stay up there for very long because they can't, they're not really flying, and then they just keep on swooping up and down, and that's where the term flying fish comes from.
And the reason that they have this skill. Is that it helps them escape from underwater predators, especially like swordfish, mackerel and tuna, which are much larger in size than they are.
Hema: That makes sense. And so that's where I said, in a way it flies because it kind of looks like it's flying. It has this whole illusion and it stays up in, in the air, out of the water.
Chef Mireille: Yeah. Okay. And it's, it's definitely a site to be seen now there are approximately about 40 to 70 varieties of this flying lip. Fish that lives in both tropical and subtropical areas. In addition to the Caribbean, you will also find them in some parts of Asia, especially like China, Vietnam, and a lot in Japan. However, Barbados is literally known as the land of the flying fish. Flying fish is one of the most Recognizable symbols of Barbados. This is a national symbol. It's found on their coins. A hologram of the flying fish, is actually on the Bajan Passport and it's part of the logo of the Barbados tourism Authority. So these are just a few ways that the Flying Fish is incorporated and is part of the cultural identity of Barbados. So now you're probably wondering, okay, so what kind of fish is it? Well, it kind of has a look and a taste similar to sardines. It's a moderately oily fish with like a sweet, salty flavor. Flying. Fish can be prepared a variety of ways. It can be fried, it can be pickled, but I think the most common way is to basically Steam it and like a Creole sauce. So what's a Creole sauce? Creole sauce or Salsa Criolla in the Spanish speaking Caribbean countries is kind of a generic term to indicate the fusion of influences that creates the cooking in the Caribbean.
. It's a mix just like the Caribbean is with Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, British, African, and indigenous influences just like a Creole language, naturally develops from several languages, mixing and simplifying to form a language unique. On its own. That's pretty much how Creole sauce develops, taking different elements from different cultures. But generally speaking, it's a tomato-based sauce that's infused with onion, garlic, peppers, and fresh herbs. The herbs and how spicy the pepper you use will vary from island to island, but just about every Caribbean island has a version of Creole sauce.
So you eat those together, little salad on the side, and you have the delicious national dish of Barbados.
Hema: Yum. So that's really interesting that those two go together. And you mentioned that the cornmeal was probably a very inexpensive ingredient to be used, and so newly freed people probably could have afforded this flying fish being abundant in the waters around Barbados probably meant at the time that it wasn't that expensive.
So this national dish, do you think stems from really simple budget friendly ingredients.
Chef Mireille: I think budget friendly and also what they were used to, because it's basically a variation of African fufu. Now, fufu has taken the world by storm, but these are things, and if you look at different Caribbean countries, they have versions of that. Even you look at like you take Spanish speaking islands, like you take something like mofongo, which is made from green plantain, but you could definitely see how , the methodology stemmed from that as well.
Hema: Now I'm hungry, as I probably am going to be after. Every time you describe these national dishes or some of the recipes. That was really a lot to cover in today's episode. We really did just scratch the surface of the history, the culture, the food, and the people of Barbados,
Chef Mireille: it's always an adventure.
Hema: And there are more adventures to come. So don't forget to follow us on Instagram and TikTok and. We will leave links to all of our sources in the show notes, as well as some recipes that you can go and look at and make some of this food yourself.
Chef Mireille: So don't forget to come back next week and find out which Caribbean nation that we're gonna be talking about. But here's the hint. Do you want me to give the hint or do you wanna give the hint?
Hema: Why don't you give the hint.
Chef Mireille: Okay, so this nation has two official currencies until 2021. When the government unified the currency,
Hema: and if you know what we're talking about, head over to Instagram, leave a comment, tell us which country you think we will be discussing in next week's episode.