Barbados Becomes a Republic
Barbados had been English and then British continuously from 1627, the longest such span in the Caribbean, and its plantation economy was the model exported to Jamaica and the Carolinas. Independence in 1966 retained the monarch as head of state, an arrangement most of the anglophone Caribbean also kept. The republican move was announced in 2020 by Prime Minister Mia Mottley's government and enacted by constitutional amendment, with Sandra Mason, the sitting Governor-General, elected as first president. There was no referendum, which drew criticism domestically. The transition was accompanied by an explicit reparations argument: Barbados has been among the most active states in the CARICOM reparations commission, and the historian Hilary Beckles, a leading figure in that movement, is vice-chancellor of the regional university.
- Year: 2021 CE
- Category: Political
