Both Sides of The Coin: The Story of The Central Bank of Barbados 1972-2017

vii This book has been a long time in coming - 24 years to be precise. It was to have been written by a “real” historian. I cannot remember the exact date but during a meeting of the Research Department’s Editorial Committee in 1995, somebody suggested that we should publish a history of the Bank as part of the activities to mark the 25th Anniversary in 1997. In the months that followed the names of several historians were mentioned; one was unavailable and for various reasons no agreement could be reached on choosing any of the others. After a while an approach was made to former bank secretary, Mr. Alfred Forde, who agreed to take on the challenge. Unfortunately, Mr. Forde died before the project ever got off the ground. By this time, the planning of the Anniversary Celebrations was at an advanced stage but we were virtually back to square one in terms of producing the history. The idea of abandoning the project did not appeal to me. I was chairman of the Planning Committee and dearly wanted everything we had so painstakingly devised to come to fruition. I already had a rough outline of the history which I had prepared for Mr. Forde. So I took it out, started to revise it and spread the word that I was writing ‘the Bank’s history’. Nobody discouraged me so I pressed on. The rest is really “history”. Even though I had studied some history in school I knew nothing about writing history, particularly the history of a central bank. Then quite fortuitously I came across a group called the “European Association for Banking History” and thereby got access to the publication How to Write the History of a Bank . A couple of quotations from the book struck PREFACE