By the middle of the 18th century the island was dotted with more than cane-processing windmills--each the focal point of a sizeable plantation. Today almost of these picturesque stone towers remain, although they now serve as houses, bars, restaurants and shops.
At Betty's Hope , Codrington's original sugar estate, visitors can see a fully-restored sugar mill. Most Antiguans are of African lineage, descendants of slaves brought to the island centuries ago to labor in the sugarcane fields. However, Antigua's history of habitation extends as far back as two and a half millenia before Christ. The first settlements, dating from about B. Long after the Siboney had moved on, Antigua was settled by the pastoral, agricultural Arawaks A.
The earliest European contact with the island was made by Christopher Columbus during his second Caribbean voyage , who sighted the island in passing and named it after Santa Maria la Antigua, the miracle-working saint of Seville. European settlement, however, didn't occur for over a century, largely because of Antigua's dearth of fresh water and abundance of determined Carib resistance.
Finally, in , a group of Englishmen from St. Kitts established a successful settlement, and in , with Codrington's arrival, the island entered the sugar era.
The largest, Antigua, has secluded bays and sandy beaches, coral reefs and volcanic rocks rising to about metres at Mount Obama. Barbuda is a flat coral island with a large lagoon, while tiny Redonda is rocky and uninhabited. The Commonwealth taught senior officials how to run fair and trusted elections which are inclusive of women, young people and disabled people.
The Secretariat helped set up talks between Antigua and Barbuda and Trinidad and Tobago to encourage awareness and partnership on tackling violent and extremist views. It also supported the second Faith in the Commonwealth initiative in Antigua and Barbuda, to promote understanding and respect among different communities and faiths. The Secretariat gave Antigua and Barbuda technical advice on government buying of goods and services, auditing accounts and managing risks.
The official language of the country is English, although natives also speak a local dialect known as Creole Charisma, Although the economy of Antigua and Barbuda is primarily service and tourism oriented, accounting for approximately 60 percent of the Gross National Product GDP and leading the way as the country's most important economic indicator, agriculture remains an important industry as well, although a declining one.
Fruit and vegetable production dominate the agricultural scene, but the government has encouraged expansion into livestock, cotton, and export-oriented food crops. Some other crops produced include bananas, pineapples, coconuts, cucumbers, mangoes, and sugarcane. The agricultural sector is constrained not only by the country's limited water supply water management is a major environmental concern due to the limited supply of natural fresh water and is further hampered by the clearing of trees to increase crop production, which causes rainfall to run off too quickly , but also by labor shortages that reflect the pull of higher wages in tourism and construction.
The growth of construction has been spurred by the tourism industry. Manufacturing industries that thrived during the s are export oriented, producing clothing, furniture, paint, and galvanized sheets. Antigua and Barbuda's government is a Parliamentary Democracy, a democracy based on the British Parliamentary system, and consists of a Cabinet of Ministers, headed by the Prime Minister.
As head of state, Queen Elizabeth II is represented in Antigua and Barbuda by a governor general who acts on the advice of the Prime Minister and the cabinet.
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