Barbados is a sovereign island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is 34 kilometres in length and as much as 23 kilometres in width, amounting to 431 square kilometres . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about 168 kilometres east of the islands of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and 400 kilometres north-east of Trinidad and Tobago. Barbados is outside of the principal Atlantic hurricane belt. Barbados was initially visited by the Spanish around the late 1400s to early 1500s and... first appears on a Spanish map from 1511. The Spanish explorers may have plundered the island of whatever native peoples resided therein to become slaves. The Portuguese visited in 1536, but they too left it unclaimed, with their only remnants being an introduction of wild hogs for a good supply of meat whenever the island was visited. The first English ship, the Olive Blossom, arrived in Barbados in 1624. They took possession of it in the name of the British king James I.
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| Founded: | November 30, 1966 |
| Capital: | Bridgetown |
| Population: | 230,831 |
| Official language: | English Language |
| Currency: | Barbados dollar |
| GDP: | $3,005,000,000 |
| Form of government: | Constitutional monarchy, Parliamentary system |