Barbados to be new republic as it leaves Britain's Queen

LONDON • On a rainy night in Hong Kong in 1997, Prince Charles read a message from his mother Queen Elizabeth II, as Britain handed back sovereignty of the territory to China after more than 150 years of British rule.

Today, nearly a quarter of a century on, Prince Charles will be present at another handover, when Barbados becomes the world's newest republic, with an elected president - not the Queen - as head of state.

The ceremony will not be on the same scale as that in Hong Kong, where military marching bands and bagpipes provided the backdrop to a momentous occasion that was described as "the epilogue of empire".

But the Caribbean island's abandonment of constitutional monarchy is significant, not just for the monarch and her heir, but for the new republic and others that may follow.

Mr Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine, said the declaration was a "natural progression" of a trend that began soon after the Queen took the throne in 1952.

"I think inevitably it's one that will continue, not necessarily in this current reign but in the next, and probably accelerate," he told Agence France-Presse.

Royal officials have said little about the end of nearly four painful centuries of British rule and influence on Barbados, which was a key centre in the slave trade.

"This is a matter for the government and people of Barbados," Buckingham Palace said, when the authorities in Bridgetown set out its intentions last year.

But it sends a clear message that in the twilight of the 95-year-old Queen's reign, and when Prince Charles, 73, succeeds her, the British monarchy's global reach is diminished.

In 1947, five years before Elizabeth became queen, Britain saw the "Jewel in the Crown" - India - emerge as an independent republic. But between 1983 and 1987, she was still queen of an astonishing 18 countries.

Fiji (1987) and Mauritius (1992) have since become republics, following in the footsteps of Caribbean nations Dominica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago in the 1970s.

In doing so now, tiny Barbados, with a population of just less than 300,000, could start a domino effect in the Queen's 14 remaining Commonwealth realms outside Britain.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE