ANTIGUA
SHEET #37
MINT NEVER HINGED (MNH)
DENOMINATION: british currency
Era: GEORGE VI (1936 - 1952)
CARIBBEAN, WEST INDIES
Antigua
Antigua (/ænˈtiːɡə/ ann-TEE-gə),[2] alsoknown as Waladli or Wadadli by the nativepopulation, is an island in the LesserAntilles. It is one of the LeewardIslands in the Caribbean regionand the main island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. Antigua and Barbudabecame an independent state within the Commonwealth of Nations on 1 November 1981.[3]
Antigua means "ancient" in Spanishafter an icon in SevilleCathedral, "Santa María de la Antigua [es]" —St. Mary of the Old Cathedral.[4] Thename Waladli[5] comes from the indigenous inhabitantsand means approximately "our own".[citation needed] Theisland's perimeter isroughly 87 km (54 mi) and its area 281 km2 (108 sq mi).Its population was83,191 (at the 2011 Census).[6] Theeconomy is mainly reliant on tourism, with the agricultural sector serving thedomestic market.
Over 22,000 people live in the capital city, St. John's. Thecapital is situated in the north-west and has a deep harbour which is able toaccommodate large cruise ships. Other leading population settlements are All Saints (3,412)and Liberta (2,239),according to the 2001 census.
English Harbour onthe south-eastern coast provides one of the largest deep water, protectedharbors in the Eastern Caribbean. It is the site of a restored British colonialnaval station named "Nelson's Dockyard" after Vice-Admiral The 1st Viscount Nelson. EnglishHarbour and the neighbouring village of Falmouth are yachting andsailing destinations and provisioning centres. During Antigua Sailing Week, at the end of April andbeginning of May, an annual regatta brings a number of sailing vessels andsailors to the island to take part in sporting events. Every December for thepast 60 years, Antigua has been home to one of the largest charter yacht shows,welcoming super-yachts fromaround the world.[7]
On 6 September 2017, the Category 5 HurricaneIrma destroyed 90 percent of the buildings on the islandof Barbuda andthe entire population was evacuated to Antigua.[8][9]
The first inhabitants were the Guanahatabey people.Eventually, the Arawak migratedfrom the mainland[where? — see talk page],followed by the Carib. Priorto European colonization, Christopher Columbus was the firstEuropean to visit Antigua, in 1493.[10]
The Arawak were the first well-documented group of indigenouspeople to settle Antigua. They paddled to the island by canoe (piragua)from present-day Venezuela, pushedout by the Carib, another indigenous people. The Arawak introduced agricultureto Antigua and Barbuda. Among other crops, they cultivated the Antiguan"black" pineapple. They also grew corn, sweet potatoes (white with firmer fleshthan the bright orange "sweet potato" grown in the UnitedStates), chilipeppers, guava,tobacco, and cotton.
Some of the vegetables listed, such as corn and sweet potatoes,continue to be staples of Antiguan cuisine. Colonists took them to Europe, andfrom there, they spread around the world. For example, a popular Antiguandish, dukuna (/ˈduːkuːnɑː/), is asweet, steamed dumpling made from grated sweet potatoes, flour and spices.Another staple, fungi (/ˈfuːndʒi/), isa cooked paste made of cornmeal and water.
Most of the Arawak left Antigua about A.D. 1100. Those whoremained were raided by the Carib coming from Venezuela. According to TheCatholic Encyclopedia, the Caribs' superior weapons and seafaring prowessallowed them to defeat most Arawak nations in the West Indies. They enslavedsome and cannibalised others.[11] Watsonpoints out that the Caribs had a much more warlike culture than the Arawak.[11]
The indigenous people of the West Indies built excellent seavessels, which they used to sail the Atlantic and Caribbean resulting in muchof the South American and the Caribbean islands being populated by the Arawakand Carib. Their descendants live throughout South America, particularlyBrazil, Venezuela and Colombia. According to A Brief History of theCaribbean, infectious diseases introduced from Europe, high rates ofmalnutrition and enslavement led to a rapid population decline among theCaribbean's native population. There are some differences of opinions as to therelative importance of these causes.[12]
Christopher Columbus named the island"Antigua" in 1493 in honour of the "Virgin of the OldCathedral"[4] (Spanish: La Virgen de la Antigua) found in SevilleCathedral in southern Spain. On his 1493 voyage, honouring a vow, henamed many islands after different aspects of St. Mary,including Montserrat and Guadeloupe.
In 1632, a group of English colonists left St Kitts tosettle on Antigua. Christopher Codrington, anEnglishman, established the first permanent English settlement on the island.[10] Antiguarapidly developed as a profitable sugar colony. For a large portion ofAntigua's history, the island was considered Britain's "Gateway to theCaribbean". It was on the major sailing routes among the region'sresource-rich colonies. Lord Horatio Nelson, a major figure in Antigua'shistory, arrived in the late 18th century to defend the island's commercialshipping prowess.
Sugar became Antigua's main crop in about 1674, when Christopher Codrington (c.1640–1698) settled at Betty'sHope plantation. He came from Barbados, bringing the latestsugar technology with him. Betty's Hope, Antigua's first full-scale sugar plantation,was so successful that other planters turned from tobacco to sugar.[citation needed] Thisresulted in their importing slaves towork the sugarcane crops.[10]
According to A Brief History of the Caribbean, manyWest Indian colonists initially tried to use locals as slaves. These groupssuccumbed easily to disease and/or malnutrition, and died by the thousands. Theenslaved Africans adapted better to the new environment and thus became thenumber-one choice of unpaid labour; they also provided medical services andskilled labour, including carpentry, for their masters. However, the WestAfrican slave population in the Caribbean also had a high mortality rate, whichwas offset by regular imports of very high numbers of new slaves from West andCentral Africa.[13]
Sugar cane was one of the most gruelling and dangerous cropsslaves were forced to cultivate. Harvesting cane required backbreaking longdays in sugar cane fields under the hot island sun. Sugar cane spoiled quicklyafter harvest, and the milling process was slow and inefficient, forcing themill and boiling house to operate 24 hours a day during harvest season.[14] Sugarmills and boilinghouses were two of the most dangerous places for slaves to workon sugar plantations. In mills wooden or metal rollers were used to crush caneplants and extract the juices. Slaves were at risk of getting their limbs stuckand ripped off in the machines.[14] Similarly,in sugar boiling houses slaves worked under extremely high temperatures and atthe risk of being burned in the boiling sugar mixture or getting their limbsstuck.[14]
Today, collectors prize the uniquely designed colonial furniturebuilt by West Indian slaves. Many of these works feature what are nowconsidered "traditional" motifs, such as pineapples, fish andstylized serpents.
By the mid-1770s, the number of slaves had increased to 37,500,up from 12,500 in 1713. The white population, in contrast, had fallen from5,000 to below 3,000.[15] Theslaves lived in wretched and overcrowded conditions and could be mistreated oreven killed by their owners with impunity. The Slave Act of 1723 madearbitrary murder of slaves a crime, but did not do much to ease their lives.[16]
Unrest against enslavement among the island's enslavedpopulation became increasingly common. In 1729, a man named Hercules was hung, drawn and quartered andthree others were burnt alive, for conspiring to kill the slave owner NathanielCrump and his family. In 1736, an enslaved man called "Prince Klaas"(whose slavename was Court) allegedly planned to incite a slaverebellion on the island. Court was crowned "King of the Coromantees" in a pasture outside the capital ofSt. John's. The coronation appeared to be just a colourful spectacle but was,for the enslaved people, a ritual declaration of war on the colonists. Frominformation obtained from other slaves, the colonists discovered the plot andimplemented a brutal crackdown on suspected rebels. Prince Klaas and fouraccomplices were caught and executed on the breakingwheel. (However, some doubts exist about Court's guilt.)[17][13] Sixof the rebels were hanged in chains and starved to death, and another 58were burnt atthe stake. The site of these executions is now the Antiguan RecreationGround.[18][13]
The American War of Independence inthe late 18th century disrupted the Caribbean sugar trade. At the same time,public opinion in Great Britain graduallyturned against slavery.[19] "Traveling ...at slavery's end, [Joseph] Sturge and [Thomas] Harvey (1838 ...) found fewmarried slaves residing together or even on the same estate. Slaveholders oftencounted as 'married' only those slaves with mates on the estate."[20][a][b][c] GreatBritain abolished the slave trade in 1807, and all existing slaves were emancipated in1834.[10]
Horatio Nelson (whowas created 1st Viscount Nelson in 1801) was Senior Naval Officer of theLeeward Islands from 1784 to 1787 on HMS Boreas. Duringhis tenure, he tried to enforce the NavigationActs. These acts prohibited trade with the newly formed UnitedStates of America. Most of the merchants in Antigua depended upon trading with the USA, so manyof them despised Captain Nelson. As a result, he was unable to get a promotionfor some time after his stint on the island.
Unlike the Antiguan merchants, Nelson had a positive view of thecontroversial Navigation Acts:[21]
The Americans were at this timetrading with our islands, taking advantage of the register of their ships,which had been issued while they were British subjects. Nelson knew that, bythe Navigation Act, no foreigners, directly or indirectly, are permitted tocarry on any trade with these possessions. He knew, also, that the Americanshad made themselves foreigners with regard to England; they had disregarded theties of blood and language when they acquired the independence which they hadbeen led on to claim, unhappily for themselves, before they were fit for it;and he was resolved that they should derive no profit from those ties now.Foreigners they had made themselves, and as foreigners they were to be treated.[21]
Nelson said: "The Antiguan Colonists are as great rebels asever were in America, had they the power to show it."[21]
A dockyard started in 1725, to provide a base for a squadron ofBritish ships whose main function was to patrol the West Indies and thusmaintain Britain's sea power, was later named "Nelson's Dockyard" inhis honour.
While Nelson was stationed on Antigua, he frequently visited thenearby island of Nevis, wherehe met and married a young widow, Fanny Nisbet, who had previously married theson of a plantation family on Nevis.
Following the foundation of the Ulotrichian Universal Union,a friendly society which acted as a trade union (which were banned), the sugarcane workers were ready to confront the plantation owners when they slashedtheir wages. The cane workers went on strike and rioted when their leaders werearrested.[22]
In 1968, with Barbuda andthe tiny island of Redonda asdependencies, Antigua became an associated state of the Commonwealth, and inNovember 1981 it was disassociated from Britain.[10][dead link][23]
Commissioned, 9 August 1956, the Naval Facility (NAVFAC) Antiguawas one of the shore terminal stations that were part of the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS)and the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS), which were used totrack Soviet submarines. NAVFAC Antigua was decommissioned 4 February 1984.[24]
From 1958 through 1960 the United States installed the Missile Impact LocationSystem (MILS) in the Atlantic Missile Range, later the EasternRange, to localize the splashdowns of test missile nose cones. MILSwas developed and installed by the same entities that had completed the firstphase of the Atlantic SOSUS system. A MILS installation consisting of both atarget array for precision location and a broad ocean area system for goodpositions outside the target area was installed at Antigua, 1,300 nmi(1,500 mi; 2,400 km) downrange. The island was the second downrangeMILS installation with the furthest being 4,400 nmi (5,100 mi;8,100 km) downrange at Ascension Island.[25][26]
Until July 7, 2015, the United States Air Force maintained a smallbase near the airport, designated Detachment 1, 45th Operations Group, 45thSpace Wing (known as Antigua Air Station). The mission provided highrate telemetry data for the Eastern Range and its space launches. The unit wasdeactivated due to US government budget cuts and the property given to theAntiguan Government.[27]
Located in the Leeward Islands Antigua has an area of281 km2 (108 sq mi) with 87 km (54 mi)of coastline. The highest elevation on the island is 402 m(1,319 ft).
Various natural points, capes, and beaches around the islandinclude: Boon Point, Beggars Point, Parham, Willikies, Hudson Point, EnglishHarbour Town, Old Road Cape, Johnson's Point, Ffryes Point, Jennings, FiveIslands, and Yepton Beach, and Runaway Beach.
Several natural harbours are formed by these points and capes,including: Fitches Creek Bay, between Beggars Point and Parham; Nonsuch Baybetween Hudson Point and Willikies; Willoughby Bay, between Hudson Point andEnglish Harbour Town; English Harbour leading into English Harbour Town;Falmouth Harbour recessing into Falmouth; Rendezvous Bay between Falmouth andOld Road Cape; Five Islands Harbour, between Jennings and Five Islands; andGreen Bay, the main harbour at St. John's, between Yepton Beach and RunawayBeach.
The Antiguanracer is among the rarest snakes in the world. The LesserAntilles are home to four species of racers. All four have undergone severerange reductions; at least two subspecies are extinct and another, A.antiguae, now occupies only 0.1 percent of its historical range.[28]
Griswold's ameiva (Ameiva griswoldi)is a species of lizard in the genus Ameiva. It is endemic to Antigua and Barbuda. It isfound on both islands.
Mainarticle: Economy ofAntigua and Barbuda
The country's official currency is the East Caribbean dollar. Given the dominance oftourism, many prices in tourist-oriented businesses are shown in US dollars.The EC dollar is pegged to the US dollar at a varied rate and averages aboutUS$1 = EC$2.7.
Antigua's economy relies largely on tourism, and the island ispromoted as a luxury Caribbean escape. Many hotels and resorts are locatedaround the coastline. The island's single airport, VC Bird Airport, isserved by several major airlines, including VirginAtlantic, BritishAirways, AmericanAirlines, UnitedAirlines, Delta AirLines, Caribbean Airlines, AirCanada, WestJet,and JetBlue. Thereis regular air service to Barbuda.
Mainarticle: Education inAntigua and Barbuda
Antigua has two international primary/secondary schools: CCSETInternational, which offers the Ontario Secondary School Diploma, and IslandAcademy, which offers the International Baccalaureate. There are also manyother private schools but these institutions tend to follow the same localcurriculum (CXCs) as government schools.
The island of Antigua currently has two foreign-owned for-profit offshore medical schools,the AmericanUniversity of Antigua (AUA),[29] foundedin 2004, and The University of HealthSciences Antigua (UHSA),[30] foundedin 1982. The island's medical schools cater mostly to foreign students butcontribute to the local economy and health care.
Antigua was one of the first nations to legalize, license, andregulate online gambling and is a primary location for incorporation of onlinegambling companies. Some countries, most notably the United States,argue that if a particular gambling transaction is initiated outside thecountry of Antigua and Barbuda, then that transaction is governed by the lawsof the country where the transaction was initiated. This argument was broughtbefore the WTO and was deemed incorrect.[31]
In 2006, the United States Congress voted to approve the UnlawfulInternet Gambling Enforcement Act which criminalized theoperations of offshore gambling operators which take wagers from American-basedgamblers. This was a prima facie violation of the GATS treatyobligations enforced by the WTO, resulting in a series of rulings unfavourableto the US.
On 21 December 2007, an Article 22 arbitration panel ruled thatthe United States' failure to comply with WTO rules would attract aUS$21 million sanction.[32]
The WTO ruling was notable in two respects:
First, although technically a victory for Antigua, the$21 million was far less than the US$3.5 billion which had beensought; one of the three arbitrators was sufficiently bothered by the proprietyof this that he issued a dissenting opinion.
Second, a rider to the arbitration ruling affirmed the right ofAntigua to take retaliatory steps in view of the prior failure of the US tocomply with GATS. These included the rare, but not unprecedented, right todisregard intellectual property obligations to the US.[33]
Antigua's obligations to the US in respect of patents,copyright, and trademarks are affected. In particular, Berne Conventioncopyright is in question, and also material not covered by the Berneconvention, including TRIPS accordobligations to the US. Antigua may thus disregard the WIPOtreaty on intellectual property rights, and therefore the USimplementation of that treaty (the Digital MillenniumCopyright Act, or DMCA)—at least up to the limit of compensation.[34]
Since there is no appeal to the WTO from an Arbitration panel ofthis kind, it represents the last legal word from the WTO on the matter.Antigua is therefore able to recoup some of the claimed loss of trade byhosting (and taxing) companies whose business model depends on immunity fromTRIPS provisions.[35]
Software company SlySoft was based in Antigua, allowing it toavoid nations with laws that are tough on anti-circumvention of technologicalcopyright measures, in particular the DMCA in the United States.[36]
Swiss American Bank Ltd., later renamed Global Bank of Commerce,Ltd, was formed in April 1983 and became the first offshoreinternational financial institution governed by the International BusinessCorporations, Act of 1982 to become a licensed bank in Antigua.[37] Thebank was later sued by the United States for failure to release forfeited fundsfrom one of its account holders.[38] SwissAmerican Bank was founded by Bruce Rappaport.[39]
Stanford International Bank wasformed by AllenStanford in 1986 in Montserrat where it was calledGuardian International Bank. On 17 February 2009, the U.S. Securities andExchange Commission charged Allen Stanford, Laura Pendergest-Holt and James Davis withfraud[40][41][42] inconnection with the bank's US$8 billion certificate of deposit (CD) investmentscheme that offered "improbable and unsubstantiated high interestrates".[43] Thisled the federal government to freeze the assets of the bank and other Stanfordentities.[40][44] On27 February 2009, Pendergest-Holt was arrested by federal agents in connectionwith the alleged fraud.[45] Onthat day, the SEC saidthat Stanford and his accomplices operated a "massive Ponzischeme", misappropriated billions of investors' money andfalsified the Stanford International Bank's records to hide their fraud."Stanford International Bank's financial statements, including itsinvestment income, are fictional," the SEC said.[41][46]
Antigua Overseas Bank (AOB)was part of the ABI Financial Group and was a licensed bank in Antigua. On 13April 2012, AOB was placed into receivership by the government of Antigua.[47]
On 27 November 2018, Scotiabank, the leading commercial bank onthe island, announced plans to sell its banking operations in Antigua and 9other non-core Caribbean markets to Republic Financial Holdings Limited.[48]
The major Antiguan sport is cricket. Vivian("Viv") Richards is one of the most famousAntiguans, who played for, and captained, the West Indies cricket team.Richards scored the fastest Test century at the Antigua Recreation Ground, it wasalso the venue at which Brian Lara twice broke the worldrecord for an individual Test innings (375 in 1993/94, 400 not out in 2003/04).Antigua was the location of a 2007 Cricket World Cup site, on a newRecreation Ground constructed on an old cane field in the north of the island.Both football (soccer) and basketball are becoming popular among the islandyouth. There are several golf courses in Antigua. DanielBailey was the first athlete to win a global world medal atthe 2010 IAAF World IndoorChampionships.
Being surrounded by water, sailing is one of the most popularsports with Antigua Sailing Week and Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta being two ofthe region's most reputable sailing competitions. Hundreds of yachts fromaround the world compete around Antigua each year. Sport fishing is also a verypopular sport with several big competitions held yearly. Windsurfing was verypopular until kite-surfing came to the island. Kitesurfing or kite-boarding isvery popular at Jabbawock Beach.
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