Bermuda

By: Lisa Clayton Robinson

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Bermuda

British dependent territory consisting of an archipelago of about 300 islands in the western Atlantic Ocean.

Bermuda's reputation as a tropical paradise leads many outsiders to mistakenly identify it as part of the Caribbean Islands. In fact, Bermuda is closer to New York and New England than to Florida and the Caribbean, and as far from the Caribbean as Washington, D.C., is from Dallas, Texas. As a dependent territory of Great Britain, it shares a common legacy of colonialism and slavery with countries in the British Caribbean. But Bermuda was actually part of British North America, and its history is connected to the early British colonies in Virginia.

The name Bermuda is used in the singular to describe a country of nearly 150 islands. The principal island is Saint George's. Most Bermudans live on one of seven islands; the other islands are uninhabited. A Spanish sailor named Juan de Bermudez first discovered Bermuda in 1503. By 1510 maps of the area referred to the islands as La Bermuda. None of the islands were inhabited when Bermudez first saw them, and Spain chose not to settle them. They remained uninhabited and isolated until 1609, when the British ship Sea Venture was shipwrecked on one of the reefs as it carried English colonists to Virginia. The survivors were impressed by the islands' beauty, and their stories were carried back to England—Shakespeare's play The Tempest was reputedly inspired by their accounts. British emigrants became interested in the islands, and by 1612 Bermuda had become a separate colony.

Four years later records for the ship Edwin showed that the cargo included “an Indian and a negar [sic]”—the first known black Bermudan. By the mid-1600s African slavery was common across Bermuda. The islands' soil was not fertile enough to support a large-scale plantation economy, but slaves were still used as field hands, fishermen, and tradesmen. There were several recorded revolts. In 1730 a group of slaves were accused of plotting to kill their masters, and slave Sarah Bassett was burned at the stake for leading the insurrection. Thirty years later, between 600 and 700 slaves were accused of planning a much larger mutiny; many of them were tried and executed. Events like these indicated how unhappy Bermudan slaves were with their captivity, but slavery was not abolished in Bermuda and all other British territories until 1834.

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most Bermudans worked in the shipbuilding, tobacco, fishing, or salt mining business. Abolition took effect just as these industries were beginning to die out, so black and white Bermudans found themselves in search of new livelihoods. The American Civil War (1861–1865) brought temporary prosperity to Bermuda. With the North's blockade of Southern ports, the nearby Southern states turned to Bermuda as an alternative port. Goods and guns were smuggled between Europe and the South via boats based in Bermuda. But when the war ended, so did Bermuda's short-lived prosperity.

For the next several decades Bermudans turned their attention to agriculture. Eventually crops such as Easter lilies, Bermuda onions, and potatoes became so successful that many planters chose to use indentured laborers from Portugal to supplement their work force. By the 1920s tourism began to replace agriculture as the islands' economic foundation. The United States military base at Kindley Field, established during World War II, also boosted the local economy for fifty years before it was shut down in 1995. In recent years financial services and offshore banking have replaced tourism as the leading sector of Bermuda's economy. Between 1996 and 2001 revenues from tourism fell by over $40 million. By 2000 foreign companies were contributing twice as much to Bermuda's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as tourism. The tourist industry took another hit in September 2003 when Hurricane Fabian struck Bermuda, severely damaging some hotels and forcing the cancellation of several conferences scheduled to take place there. Despite setbacks to the tourist industry, however, Bermuda continues to boast one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.

Their prosperity under the current political arrangement may be one reason most Bermudans do not favor independence from Great Britain. Bermuda is the oldest colony in the British Commonwealth. For most of its first 300 years as a British colony, the local government was made up exclusively of wealthy white landowners or white appointees of the British Crown. Black Bermudans protested, and in 1963 universal adult suffrage was finally introduced for the first time (although property owners were still given two votes). In 1968 a new constitution gave the elected government complete autonomy over local affairs. But when the British government recommended in 1978 that Bermuda become independent, most Bermudans rejected the proposal. About twenty years later, sentiments on the islands were the same; 73 percent of Bermudans voted against independence in a 1995 referendum. This attitude has not changed much since that time, particularly since the passage of a law granting British citizenship to all citizens of British overseas territories. A poll conducted in 2002 showed that over two-thirds of Bermudans favored accepting British citizenship, while fewer than 20 percent said they would refuse it.

It is clear that Bermudans currently do not want full independence, but the strength of their ties to Britain is a controversial issue that is split along party and racial lines. The United Bermuda Party (UBP), a moderate, multiracial party often associated with the white business community, controlled government from 1968 to 1998. The Progressive Labour Party (PLP), long the leading opposition party, became the governing party for the first time in the 1998 elections. The PLP won twenty-six of the forty seats in the House of Assembly, which along with the eleven-member appointed Senate forms Bermuda's bicameral legislature. The PLP is identified with the unions and the black working class and strongly opposes any attempts to strengthen ties with Britain. It also supports a more extensive welfare system and more equitable taxation. As leader of the PLP, Jennifer Smith became premier of Bermuda; independence was not an issue in the election. In July 2003, Alex Scott was elected premier of Bermuda. Governor Sir John Vereker, appointed by Queen Elizabeth in 2002, represents the British monarch, who is chief of state.

Today Bermuda has a multicultural society in which cricket is as popular as Calypso. It has more people per square mile than most other countries, and more places of worship and more golf courses per square mile than anywhere else in the world. Its native residents are joined every year by about 2,100 non-Bermudan workers, often from the Caribbean, and by half a million tourists, mostly from North America. In recent decades, however, the government of Bermuda has limited new construction in order to keep the country from becoming too overcrowded. Even with the crowds, however, Bermuda retains its reputation as a friendly and relaxing place.

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