Bar­ba­dos yes­ter­day went down the road trav­elled by some oth­er of their Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts by be­com­ing the world’s lat­est coun­try to achieve re­pub­li­can sta­tus.

In a cer­e­mo­ny full of pomp and pageantry de­spite the COVID-19 pro­to­cols still in place, hun­dreds of peo­ple gath­ered along the Cham­ber­lain Bridge and gath­ered at Na­tion­al He­roes Square in Bridgetown at mid­night and with the na­tion­al an­them play­ing, a 21-gun salute marked the coun­try of­fi­cial­ly sev­er­ing ties with Britain’s Queen Eliz­a­beth II as head of state — a re­la­tion­ship which dat­ing back some 400 years to the slave trade.

In de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress in the aus­pi­cious po­si­tion of be­ing the first fe­male head of state, Pres­i­dent-elect, Dame San­dra Ma­son, told cit­i­zens, “We the peo­ple must give Re­pub­lic Bar­ba­dos its spir­it and its sub­stance. We must shape its fu­ture. We are each oth­er’s and our na­tion’s keep­ers. We the peo­ple are Bar­ba­dos.”

Prince Charles, who as the heir to the British throne was on hand as the Queen’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive, was re­flec­tive as the Queen’s roy­al stan­dard flag was low­ered, re­placed and a new re­pub­li­can Bar­ba­dos de­clared. In not­ing the stain colo­nial­ism on Bar­ba­dos’ his­to­ry, Prince Charles said, “The cre­ation of this re­pub­lic of­fers a new be­gin­ning. From the dark­est days of our past and the ap­palling atroc­i­ty of slav­ery which for­ev­er stains our his­to­ry, peo­ple of this is­land forged their path with ex­tra­or­di­nary for­ti­tude.”

As part of the cel­e­bra­tion, which came 55 years to the day on which Bar­ba­dos al­so de­clared its in­de­pen­dence in 1966, Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, who had cham­pi­oned the re­pub­li­can­ism move­ment for the is­land, al­so de­clared Bar­ba­di­an-born US-based R&B star Robyn “Ri­han­na” Fen­ty, who was al­so on hand for the event, a na­tion­al hero.

Bar­ba­dos thus be­came on­ly the fourth Caribbean coun­try to cut their re­la­tion­ship with the British monar­chy, fol­low­ing Guyana, Do­mini­ca and Trinidad and To­ba­go. Just as their oth­er Caribbean coun­ter­parts, how­ev­er, Bar­ba­dos will re­main in the 54-state Com­mon­wealth arrange­ment.

Of course, many coun­tries take this step to mean that they are fi­nal­ly an adult, self-suf­fi­cient and able to make their own de­ci­sions and fi­nance their economies with­out hav­ing to seek per­mis­sion from the monar­chy. Nat­u­ral­ly, there will still be some col­lab­o­ra­tion with Britain on ini­tia­tives of mu­tu­al ben­e­fit. Dur­ing the process go­ing for­ward, Bar­ba­dos, which is of­ten re­ferred to as “Lit­tle Eng­land,” may al­so even want to re­move all ves­tiges of the Eng­lish monar­chy, since sev­er­al key tourist at­trac­tions, roads and mon­u­ments are named af­ter the Queen or her an­ces­tors. Yet, some cur­rent coun­tries who are un­der British in­flu­ence may not dare take such a step in the cur­rent glob­al sce­nario, where COVID-19 is rav­aging their fi­nan­cial and hu­man re­sources and they have to lean on sup­port from ben­e­fi­cia­ries more and more.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, how­ev­er, some Bar­ba­di­ans in­ter­viewed by in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tions on the is­land yes­ter­day were com­plete­ly un­aware of what be­com­ing a re­pub­lic meant. De­spite this, how­ev­er, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens polled still wel­comed the move with a kind of pride on­ly be­com­ing a re­pub­lic can en­gen­der.

So for the bold step it took at mid­night on Tues­day, Bar­ba­dos is de­serv­ing of ku­dos from her Caribbean col­leagues.