- Title: Barbados will cut royal ties and become a Republic on Nov. 30
- Date: 23rd November 2021
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (FILE - OCTOBER 15, 2021) (REUTERS) ***WARNING: CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** (SOUNDBITE) (English) WRITER-DIRECTOR, RUSSELL OWEN, ON HOW THE IDEA CAME ABOUT, SAYING: "There was a very famous story in, off the coast of Wales, the Smalls lighthouse, which is exactly the same story that Robert Eggers used for 'The Lighthouse', and we were film
- Embargoed: 7th December 2021 17:41
- Keywords: Barbados Commonwealth Prince Charles Prince Harry Queen Elizabeth II Rihanna
- Location: VARIOUS LOCATIONS
- City: VARIOUS LOCATIONS
- Country: Barbados
- Topics: South America / Central America,Government/Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA005F4UJ32F
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE THIS EDIT CONTAINS 4:3 MATERIAL
Prince Charles, the 73-year-old heir to the British throne, will travel to Barbados to mark the Caribbean island's transition to a republic which entails the removal of Queen Elizabeth as head of state.
A former colony that gained independence in 1966, Barbados wants to remove Queen Elizabeth, Charles's mother, as its head of state and become a republic.
The republic of Barbados will be declared at a ceremony which begins late in the evening on Monday, Nov. 29 at the National Heroes Square in Bridgetown.
Last month, Barbados elected its first-ever president to replace the queen.
Sandra Mason will be sworn in as president on Nov. 30, the country's 55th anniversary of independence from Britain.
Prime Minister Mia Mottley has said the time has come to leave behind the island's colonial past.
Barbados's move is the first time in nearly 30 years since a realm removed the queen as head of state: Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, proclaimed itself a republic but remained in the Commonwealth, an association of mostly former British colonies which is home to 2.5 billion people.
The birth of the republic, 55 years to the day since Barbados declared independence, finally unclasps almost all the colonial bonds that have kept the tiny island in the Lesser Antilles tied to England since an English ship arrived in 1625 and claimed it for King James I. Barbados stayed in British hands, unlike other Caribbean islands that were fought over by the Spanish, British, Dutch, French and Americans.
Clarence House said Mottley invited Charles, as the future head of the Commonwealth, to be a guest of honour at the events celebrating the birth of the new republic.
British colonialists used the land for sugar cane production and the island became a focus of the brutal transatlantic slave trade, as plantation owners shipped over captured Africans as slaves to work in the fields.
According to the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, by the 1670s enslaved Africans outnumbered whites by a ratio of almost 10 to one.
Barbados received 600,000 enslaved Africans between 1627 and 1833 who were put to work in the sugar plantations, earning fortunes for the English owners and making Barbados the sugarised jewel in the British empire.
Many Africans did not survive the horrendous sea passage to the Caribbean and they endured appalling conditions on the plantations. Meanwhile, slave owners became enormously rich.
Slavery was abolished in Barbados in 1834, and full freedom from slavery was celebrated in 1838.
Today's population of under 300,000 is overwhelming of African descent.
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