Barbados was inhabited by its indigenous peoples - Arawaks and Caribs - prior to the European colonization of the Americas in the 16th century. Barbados was claimed by the Portuguese from 1532-1620; the island was English and a British colony from 1625 until 1966. Since 1966, it has been a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, modelled on the Westminster system, with Elizabeth II, Queen of Barbados, as head of state; some evidence suggests that Barbados may have been settled in the second millennium BC, but this is limited to fragments of conch lip adzes found in association with shells that have been radiocarbon-dated to about 1630 BC. Documented Amerindian settlement dates to between about 350 and 650 AD; the arrivals were a group known as the Saladoid-Barrancoid from the mainland of South America. A second wave of settlers appeared around the year 800 and a third in the mid-13th century; this last group came to rule over the others. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to discover the island.

Portuguese navigator Pedro A. Campos named it Os Barbados. Frequent slave-raiding missions by the Spanish Empire in the early 16th century led to a massive decline in the Amerindian population, so that by 1541 a Spanish writer claimed they were uninhabited; the Amerindians were either captured for use as slaves by the Spanish or fled to other, more defensible mountainous islands nearby. From about 1600 the English and Dutch began to found colonies in the North American mainland and the smaller islands of the West Indies. Although Spanish and Portuguese sailors had visited Barbados, the first English ship touched the island on 14 May 1625, England was the first European nation to establish a lasting settlement there from 1627. England is said to have made its initial claim to Barbados in 1625, although an earlier claim may have been made in 1620. Nonetheless, Barbados was claimed from 1625 in the name of King James I of England. There were earlier English settlements in The Americas, several islands in the Leeward Islands were claimed by the English at about the same time as Barbados.

Barbados grew to become the third major English settlement in the Americas due to its prime eastern location. 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 tenants and much of the profits of their labor returned to Courten and his company; 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, by a group led by John Powell's younger brother, consisting of 80 settlers and 10 English laborers; the latter were young indentured laborers who according to some sources had been abducted making them slaves. Courten's title was transferred to James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle, in what was called the "Great Barbados Robbery." Carlisle chose as governor Henry Hawley, who established the House of Assembly in 1639, in an effort to appease the planters, who might otherwise have opposed his controversial appointment.

In the period 1640–60, 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 and 23,000 in New England. Most English arrivals were indentured. After five years of labor, they were given "freedom dues" of about £10 in goods. Around the time of Cromwell a number of rebels and criminals were 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 high. Before this, the mainstay of the infant colony's economy was the growing export of tobacco, but tobacco prices fell in the 1630s, as Chesapeake production expanded. Around the same time, fighting during the War of the Three Kingdoms and the Interregnum spilled over into Barbados and Barbadian territorial waters.

The island was not involved in the war until after the execution of Charles I, when the island's government fell under the control of Royalists. To try to bring the recalcitrant colony to heel, the Commonwealth Parliament passed an act on 3 October 1650 prohibiting trade between England and Barbados, because the island traded with the Netherlands, further navigation acts were passed prohibiting any but English vessels trading with Dutch colonies; these acts were a precursor to the First Anglo-Dutch War. The Commonwealth of England sent an invasion force under the command of Sir George Ayscue, which arrived in October 1651. After some skirmishing, the Royalists in the House of Assembly led by Lord Willoughby surrendered; the conditions of the surrender were incorporated into the Charter of Barbados, signed at the Mermaid's Inn, Oistins, on 17 January 1652. Sugar cane cultivation in Barbados began in the 1640s, after its introducti

Rita Arnould was a housekeeper and courier of the Red Orchestra resistance group in Belgium during World War II. She was captured when the Germans found her in a house from which clandestine radio messages were being sent; the information she gave led to collapse of the network. She was executed. Rita Arnould was born in Frankfurt to a Jewish family, she studied philosophy at Frankfurt University. He convinced her to become a Communist activist. In 1933 the couple moved to Brussels after Hitler had seized power, since it was now dangerous in Germany to be either a Jew or Communist. Soon after reaching Brussels she married a M. Arnould, a well-to-do Dutch textile salesman, over twice her age, settled into a domestic routine. During World War II the Germans invaded Belgium in May 1940. Rita's husband died soon after, she asked Isidor Springer to help. He was now making a good living selling diamonds, had a Belgian wife. Springer established her as his mistress at 101 Rue des Atrébates, where she worked as a housekeeper and courier for two agents who called themselves Carlos Alamo and Anna Verlinden.

The Germans detected radio transmissions from the house and a group led by Abwehr Captain Harry Piepe raided it in the small hours of the night of 12–13 December 1941. A man was caught and brought back. Inside the house they found Rita, a woman agent, a radio transmitter, still warm; the woman was trying to burn enciphered messages. The man was a radio operator named Anton Danilov an alias of David Kamy; the Germans found a hidden room holding the material and equipment needed to produce forged documents, including blank passports, forms and rubber stamps. Rita told Captain Piepe what she knew. There were two passports with pictures which Rita identified as the head of all the Soviet espionage groups in Europe and his deputy in Belgium; the next day Mikail Makarov, using the alias Carlos Alamo and was a radio operator, came to the house and was arrested. Rita was 27 years old, her information led to discovery of others in the network and the collapse of the Rote Kapelle network. During interrogations Rita gave information that led to the German discovery of the Soviet agents' cypher.

The Germans had omitted to take the books that were lying on the table, a member of the spy network removed them. When the Germans realized that the cypher was a book code, they coached Rita to remember the titles. With difficulty, she recalled the title an obscure 1910 novel; this turned out to be the key. The book was not located until May 1942. Using it, about 120 intercepted messages from June 1941 onward were deciphered, including a message with the addresses of key Soviet agents in Berlin. Springer moved to Lyon in France, where he resumed his clandestine work; the head of the ring, Victor Guryevitch escaped. The woman taken with Rita was a Polish Jew named Sofia Posnanska, trained in cyphering in Moscow before the war, she refused to collaborate and killed herself in St. Gilles Prison in Brussels on 29 September 1942. Makarov was tried before the Kriegsgerichtshof, sentenced to death and executed in 1942 at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. David Kamy was tried by a German military court in Belgium, sentenced to death and executed at Fort Breendonk on 30 April 1943.

Arnould was taken to Berlin-Moabit prison. She was tried by the Berlin Kriegsgerichtshof in April 1943, sentenced to death, executed on 20 August 1943 at Plötzensee Prison

Ann Weaver Norton was an American sculptor and writer of children's books. Norton was born in Selma, the daughter of William Minter Weaver II and Edith Vaughan Weaver, she showed early talent for art, most influenced by her two aunts, Clara Weaver Parrish and Rose Pettus Weaver, who were artists themselves. Weaver Parrish had studied at the Art Students League in New York City under William Merritt Chase, exhibited at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and worked with stained glass at the Tiffany Studios, she returned to Alabama, organizing exhibitions of southern women artists. Rose Weaver most studied in New York as well, had a career as a sculptor in wood. After graduating from high school, in an attempt to earn money to attend art school Norton wrote and illustrated three children's books – Frawg, Boochy's Wings, Pappy King – while vacationing at the family summer home near Sardis, she attended Smith College. In her senior year, Norton was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude in 1927.

In 1928, Norton was admitted to the National Academy of Design. She attended classes there for three years, studying under Charles Hinton, Alice Harold Murphy, Leon Kroll, Carl Thomas Anderson, Charles Keck, she held two scholarships during this time. During the summers she took classes at the Grand Central School of Art from George John Lober. In the spring of 1930, Norton attended the Art Students League of New York, studying under Homer Boss. In 1932, she was admitted to Cooper Union where the education was free but admission competitive, studied sculpture for three and a half years under Charles Rudy. At Cooper Union, Norton won numerous awards in sculpture composition, she was awarded two traveling fellowships - an Art and Archeology Scholarship from the Institute for International Education and another fellowship to study garden sculpture in Italy and England. When she returned to the States, Norton sought out a few sculptors whose work reflected her developing style. One was John Hovannes, who taught at the Art Students Cooper Union.

Another was Alexander Archipenko, a sculptor, part of an artists' group in Paris called Section d'Or, which included Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, George Braque and others. In all, Norton spent five years as an apprentice among others, she received Carnegie Traveling Fellowships in 1935 and 1940. In the 1930s, views on art were changing radically. A new generation that came of age after the first world war were questioning the validity of the traditional institutions of culture and aesthetics. A show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1929 featured works by Picasso and Braque among many other European artists who were exploring new techniques of cubism and abstraction. In sculpture, the traditional method of starting with a model and hiring a craftsman to create the sculpture was shifting in some circles to the method of "direct carving"; this was a process. Constantin Brancusi was a leading proponent of this process. Using this process, their sculpture took on a more abstracted, non-literal representation.

Norton admired these sculptors, her drawings at the time show a shift towards more abstract and simple lines. While her sculptures at the time demonstrate a continued interest in figurative art, the subject matter shifted from the traditional focus on heroic figures to real people living every day lives. Norton was having some success in her field during this time, she showed Negro Head at MOMA in 1930. Through her interest in making garden sculpture, most influenced by her traveling fellowship in Italy and England, she received a commission in 1939 for a statue of St. Francis for a private garden, it was a success, as she received a glowing letter from the owner for her skill. However, other commissions were not forthcoming, despite her successes, Norton realized she needed to find alternate means of financial support, turned to teaching, she applied and was accepted for a position teaching sculpture at the Norton Gallery and School of Art in West Palm Beach, starting in early 1943. With this additional income, Norton was able to work with the Anton Basky Foundation in New York City to cast some of her modeled work, including a major series called Casualties, with four bronze sculptures, produced between 1944 and 1947.

Several more sculptures were created in the late 1940s, portraying every day subject matter such as people cutting hair, children pumping water, kneeling figures and others. A number of collectors in Palm Beach began to take notice of Norton's work and purchased several sculptures. In addition, the director of the Norton Gallery, Robert Hunter, bought two pieces -- Beauty Parlor in 1946 and Machine II in 1947. Through her teaching at the Norton Gallery, she began to be acquainted with the founder of the Norton Gallery, Ralph Norton. Mr. Norton had been president and chair of the board of the Acme Steel Company, becoming a major art collector as well. In 1935, he and his first wife, Elizabeth Calhoun Norton, moved to Florida for the winter months, working with noted architect Marion Sims Wyeth, he created the Norton Gallery in order to display his works, he wanted his new institution