Olivia Christie
Barbados has severed ties with the British monarchy, establishing itself as the world’s newest republic.
In an overnight ceremony in Bridgetown, on 30 November, Sandra Mason was elected as president. She proclaimed, “We, the people, must give Barbados its spirit and substance. We must shape its future”.
Prince Charles and Barbadian singer Rihanna also attended the event, which coincided with Barbados’s 55th anniversary of independence from colonial rule. The Caribbean Island has operated as a constitutional monarchy since 1966, with Queen Elizabeth acting as head of state.
Despite the constitutional amendment, the Prince of Wales stressed in his speech the continued friendship between the two nations. Barbados has already confirmed its intention to remain in the Commonwealth, an association of countries that were previously part of the British empire and its dependencies.
The History of Barbados
The Caribbean country has cast the removal of Elizabeth II as a way to finally break with the demons of its colonial history.
Barbados was Britain’s first truly profitable slave society. Between 1627 and 1833, the island received over 600,000 African slaves, who were subsequently put to work on the sugar plantations.
This made sugar cheap and Britain rich.
The James Drax plantation, the largest in Barbados, was one of the country’s most heinous examples of the brutality of slavery.
Here a new model of slavery was created, one which was later emulated across the Americas.
“’there was almost a kind of indifference, a kind of silence” about the island’s history.”
Instead of transporting slaves from Africa then working them to death, Drax treated the women better so that they would reproduce and have more slaves.
David Comissiong, the country’s ambassador to Caricom (a Caribbean regional integration body) has described Barbados in the 17th century as “a brutal, hellish society.”
However, for the hundreds of thousands of tourists that visit Barbados each year, it is easy to never encounter this history. There is only a single statue commemorating the 1833 emancipation, located in the centre of a busy roundabout.
As Esther Phillips, Barbados’s poet laureate has recalled “there was almost a kind of indifference, a kind of silence” about the island’s history.
The Movement for Change in Barbados
In the decades following Barbados’s independence 55 years ago, there has been a growing but gradual effort to confront the past.
Though there had been some hesitancy towards republicanism in Barbados due to, among other things, a fear that republicanism would lead to authoritarianism and instability, the explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 triggered seismic changes in Barbados.
This propelled the government to finally propose a republic that had been promised for decades but always put off.
The first significant step was the tearing down of the controversial Lord Nelson statue in November 2020. Nelson was deemed to be a supporter of slavery in the colony.
Notably, at the ceremony, Prime Minister Mia Mottley, promised that within a year Barbados would have achieved its Republican status.
The Significance of This Break
British monarch or no British monarch, Barbados is still essentially the same country.
However, it is the symbolic change that really counts. This is a step forward in Barbados’s path to distancing itself from its colonial history.
Furthermore, the events in Barbados may signal changes to come in other Caribbean nations.
Monarchists have been concerned for years that the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign may trigger a wave of former colonies to break with the English crown. Barbados implies that perhaps this threat has arrived in her diamond jubilee year instead.
Featured image courtesy of Kathryn Maingot via Unsplash. No changes or alterations were made to this image. Image licence can be found here.
