White Antiguans and Barbudans

European immigration to Antigua and Barbuda began once the islands were colonized by the English in 1632. The islands' early landowning class was mainly composed of British plantation owners such as Christopher Codrington, who established the first large sugar estate on Antigua in 1674. During the colonial period, Irish people comprised about a quarter of Antigua's white population.[4] Further immigration of Europeans took place over the coming centuries, including a significant wave of Portuguese immigrants from Madeira who were invited to the islands as farm laborers in the 19th Century. More than 2,500 Portuguese immigrated to the islands during this period and established themselves as the bulk of Antigua's middle class.[5] There is also a sizeably minority of Syrians and Lebanese, most of whom immigrated in the 20th century. Until the mid-20th Century, the white minority experienced a heavy social divide between the mostly British upper class, the Portuguese, and the Arabs.[6] Other nationalities present within Antigua's white minority include Czechoslovaks, Americans, and Dominicans.