The Country

Located in the northern part of the Caribbean’s Lesser Antilles, the islands of Antigua and Barbuda are populated largely by blacks whose ancestors were transported as slaves from western Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries. Minorities include descendants of British colonial settlers, Portuguese laborers, and Lebanese and Syrian traders. Anglican Protestantism and Roman Catholicism claim the largest number of adherents, although a wide variety of other denominations exist, and complete religious freedom prevails.

Agriculture dominated the economy until the 1960s, when a pronounced decline in sugar prices led to the abandonment of most cane fields and increased reliance on tourism, which currently accounts for about 60 percent of GDP. The harbor at St. John’s, long used as a dockyard for the British Navy, is ...