Barbados is an island nation in the Caribbean Sea, and its capital is Bridgetown. Barbados was inhabited originally by the Kalinago people from the thirteenth century and other Ameridians before that, and the Spanish arrived in the fifteenth century and claimed the island. The Portuguese Empire claimed the island from the 1530s–1620. The British took control of the island in 1625, using it primarily as a sugar colony and as part of the English slave trade. Emancipation occurred in 1833. In 1966, Barbados became a Commonwealth of Britain.