{"id":2181142,"date":"2025-11-29T19:02:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T19:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2181142"},"modified":"2025-11-29T19:02:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T19:02:14","slug":"why-barbados-became-a-republic-and-cut-ties-with-the-british-monarchy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/why-barbados-became-a-republic-and-cut-ties-with-the-british-monarchy\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Barbados became a republic and cut ties with the British monarchy"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

Barbados is famous for its beaches, for its obsessive love of cricket, and for being the birthplace of rum (and Rihanna!).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then on November 30, 2021 it became famous for something else: Removing the British monarch as head of state and becoming a republic.<\/p>\n

But the tiny Caribbean island nation’s independent spirit did not emerge from nowhere. Barbados has long been a political pioneer. One of the world’s oldest parliaments was established in Barbados in 1639 \u2014 albeit under British colonial control.<\/p>\n

Yet with countries like Australia still debating whether or not the time has come to become a republic, what prompted tiny Barbados with its population of less than 300,000, to take the leap?<\/p>\n

A brutal slave trade<\/h2>\n

Barbados was originally inhabited by indigenous Arawak and Carib people \u2014 who called the island Ichirouganaim \u2014 until first contact with Europeans in the 16th century. “Slave raids” by Spanish and Portuguese explorers \u2014 who renamed the island “Barbudos”, or bearded ones \u2014 wiped out the population. Those who were not abducted for slavery fled elsewhere in the region.<\/p>\n