Editing History of Barbados (section)

===Early English settlement===
{{Main|British West Indies}}
[[File:English Quakers Tobacco Planters and Slaves, Barbados, 17th cent. (colorized).jpg|thumb|English [[quakers]] and [[tobacco]] slaves farmers in Barbados.  [[Pieter vander Aa]], ''Les Forces de l'Europe, Asie, Afrique et Amerique'', 1726.]]
The settlement was established as a [[proprietary colony]] and funded by Sir [[William Courten]], a [[City of London]] merchant who acquired the title to Barbados and several other islands. So the first colonists were actually tenants and much of the profits of their labor returned to Courten and his company.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.shipstamps.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10931 |title=William And John |date=11 January 2011 |via=The Ship Stamp Society}}</ref>

The first English ship, which had arrived on 14 May 1625, was captained by John Powell. The first settlement began on 17 February 1627, near what is now [[Holetown]] (formerly Jamestown),{{Sfn|Beckles|2007|page=7}} by a group led by John Powell's younger brother, Henry, consisting of 80 settlers and 10 English laborers. The latter were young [[indentured labor]]ers who according to some sources had been abducted, effectively making them slaves. About 40 [[Taino]] slaves were brought in from Guyana to help plant crops on the west coast of the island.{{Sfn|Watson|1970|p=44}}

Courten's title was transferred to [[James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle]], in what was called the "Great Barbados Robbery." Carlisle established a separate settlement at what he called Carlisle Bay, which later became known as Bridgetown.{{Sfn|Watson|1970|p=44}}

Carlisle then chose as governor [[Henry Hawley (governor)|Henry Hawley]], who established the [[Barbados House of Assembly|House of Assembly]] in 1639, in an effort to appease the planters, who might otherwise have opposed his controversial appointment. That year, 12 years after the settlement was established, the white adult population stood at an estimated 8,700.{{Sfn|Watson|1970|p=44}}

In the period 1640–1660, the West Indies attracted over two-thirds of the total number of English emigrants to the Americas. By 1650, there were 44,000 settlers in the West Indies, as compared to 12,000 on the [[Chesapeake Bay|Chesapeake]] and 23,000 in [[New England]].

Most English arrivals were indentured. After five years of labour, they were given "freedom dues" of about £10, usually in goods. Before the mid-1630s, they also received 5–10 acres of land, but after that time the island filled and there was no more free land. Around the time of Cromwell a number of rebels and criminals were also transported there.

Timothy Meads of Warwickshire was one of the rebels sent to Barbados at that time, before he received compensation for servitude of 1000 acres of land in North Carolina in 1666. Parish registers from the 1650s show, for the white population, four times as many deaths as marriages. The death rate was very high.

Before this, the mainstay of the infant colony's economy was the growing export of tobacco, but tobacco prices eventually fell in the 1630s, as Chesapeake production expanded.