OAiS Lab 03 · Years 3–4
Saint Ann's Garrison
Garrison, plantation, museum: one continuous landscape
- Location
- Bridgetown, Barbados
- Coordinates
- 13.08°, -59.60°
- Field intensive
- Years 3–4
Built in 1705, the Garrison is a symbol of Barbadian national identity and an instrument of British colonial authority. It secured the plantation system that remade the island's ecology. The Barbados Museum and Historical Society now sits inside it.
The ground
What this site holds
- 01
The field intensive coincides with the four hundredth anniversary of Barbados's colonisation and Bridgetown's designation as a colonial capital and commercial port.
- 02
Slavery, sugar monoculture and resource extraction transformed the island's landscape and ecological character within a century.
- 03
William Morrison gardened at Kew from 1824 to 1839 while superintending a Barbados sugar plantation, and sent specimens back to the collection. One career, two of our sites.
Research questions
- How are colonial dreams of empire still sustained through changes of state — military, botanical, national, curatorial?
- What lies in the subterranean history of the Garrison, below the parade ground?
- How does a national museum hold a site that is both heritage and evidence?
Planned outputs
- Co-developed exhibition with the Barbados Museum and Historical Society
- Archival research linking Kew and Barbados plantation botany
- Summer Institute and Spec Life Symposium, York (Year 3)
Cluster leads
Andil Gosine
York University
Mohabir
Affiliation to be confirmed
Wilkie
Affiliation to be confirmed
Partners on this lab
Barbados Museum & Historical Society
Saint Ann's Garrison, Bridgetown
University of the West Indies
Cave Hill, Barbados
York University
Toronto, Ontario