The World’s Newest Republic
Barbados, the easternmost stretch of land in the Caribbean Sea, is a pear-shaped island surrounded by a dense network of bright coral. As you crisscross the island, gently sloped hills give way to mazes of sugarcane fields. The plantations that once controlled the sugar crop were some of the first outposts of British colonial control in all of the Americas. That history, dating back to when an English ship arrived in 1625, is not as distant as it may seem. Though Barbados gained its independence as a constitutional monarchy in 1966, only last year did the nation formally sever ties with Britain—removing Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state and electing the nation’s first president in the process.
As in any postcolonial place, the complexities of the past occupation are omnipresent if not entirely tangible. The stakes of shedding colonial ties are under the surface of nearly every debate in public and political life. That’s true in nations across the Caribbean, as well as former U.S. territories such as Hawaii. Still, Barbados is unusual even among nations once colonized by the British. I came to the island because I wanted to understand what had made it possible for the country previously nicknamed “Little England” to distance itself from the monarchy, and what that distance actually means. What I found was a rare and deliberate expression of public memory that is reshaping the way Barbadians understand their place in the world.
On a recent afternoon in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, a small crowd of pedestrians gathered under an expansive canopy in Golden Square Freedom Park. They had assembled there to seek shelter from a sudden rainstorm. The canopy they picked just happens to be one of the island’s most important historical sites.
[From the July/August 2022 issue: They bent to their knees and kissed the sand]
This is where the activist turned national hero Clement Payne once delivered rousing speeches to working-class Barbadians and became famous for his motto “Educate, agitate, but do not violate.” Payne’s 1937 deportation to Trinidad spurred the rebellions that started a multi-decade push toward independence from Great Britain in 1966. But the opening of Golden Square Freedom Park took place more recently, as its head of state and became the world’s newest republic. When I arrived in Barbados, the Queen had recently died. On the island and among its diaspora, news of her death drew mixed reactions. On Barbadian radio broadcasts, including from listeners calling in, most people still referred to “Her Majesty the Queen.” The Queen was a titanic figure, beloved by many in Barbados for the same reasons she is admired all over the world: her steadfast grace and her enduring commitment to public service. But others here see her primarily as a symbol and beneficiary of the harm wrought by the British empire, and they felt it was important that she didn’t die as Queen of Barbados too. This tension represents the dramatic shift that is now under way on the island. Technically, Barbados reclaimed full sovereignty nearly one year ago. But in reality, true independence is a process of becoming.
