my guest is barbados—born eminent historian sir hilary beckles.s vice chancellor of the university of the west indies and chair of a caribbean commission to gain reparations for the descendants of enslaved africans. what are his chances of success? theme music plays. professor sir hilary beckles, welcome to hardtalk. tremendous honour, pleasure to be here. so, we're here in the part of barbados that is your ancestral land, your great, great, great grandparents worked on sugar plantations just nearby. what is the legacy of that history of slavery here in barbados? well, this is where the global world and a small island came together 400 years ago. this is barbados, the first slave plantation economy in the world. this is where slavery plantations, british capitalism all came together. a small place becoming a centre of the financial world of the west. it's a tremendous history. a tremendous history, but it's also one of great, great tragedy. absolutely. the entire structures we see here, these economic systems called plantations, the enslavement of