Rashida Godwin shares why understanding Bda's relationship with the Caribbean is important #Caricom

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]It's been very deliberate for us to be disconnected from our as Tia would say our Caribbean cousins.

[00:00:07]Um again historically as you guys know I authored the Mary Prince tour learning the story of Mary Prince is a great start to learn even a good portion of our connectedness to CARICOM. As you know Mary Prince she was enslaved in Bermuda, Turks and Caicos Islands and also Antigua. And you know just sharing her story even within her story during the time of colonization and enslavement um she was enslaved and we have to remember even going further back into history before you know just before she was enslaved in the 1600s when Britain started the enslavement um economy cuz that's what it was.

[00:00:45]All these what we call countries were really companies. They were companies and we were literally dropped off by a boat. That's that's the part we don't know.

[00:00:54]It's important to go into the history of them. We're talking about the Virginia Company. The Virginia Company Britain started two companies in the early 1600s and one was called the Virginia Company and one was called the the East India Company. East India was to go over to India. That's how they ended up colonizing India. Go over there and trade but also to exploit people as well too and to bring that all back to build to build Britain's empire. And then they started the Virginia Company was to come over on the west this side of the world to the plantation plantation economies.

[00:01:30]That's what the purpose of it was. But how do we start the plantation economies? We copy what the Portuguese are doing by enslaving the people in the southern parts of of America which is like Brazil and stuff like that. But the plantation economies done in more of the Caribbean as well as Bermuda when the Britain first went to these places there were indigenous people there but they genocided them and then they decided to steal people off of Africa to continue with the building of the British Empire and create these companies which many of us refer to as countries. So, first it's important we don't even understand that Bermuda itself is the Bermuda company. When they created all these colonies down in the Caribbean, they were companies. Jamaica was a company, Bahamas was a company, Barbados was a company.