Barbados Splits from the Queen, Trading One Empire for Another

Barbados Splits from the Queen, Trading One Empire for Another

On Tuesday the Royal Standard flag representing the Queen was lowered for the last time in almost 400 years over Barbados, the Caribbean island that is now a republic with a president as head of state. At the handover ceremony declaring Barbados’s constitutional independence, Prince Charles gave a contrite speech and Rihanna was formally declared a national hero.

That does not sound especially dramatic. After all, her Majesty’s government has granted independence to countries representing a quarter of the world’s land mass since 1945. The British have learned to be graceful in their retreat from empire.

Barbados remains a member of the Commonwealth — the loose association of former members of the British Empire over which Queen Elizabeth presides. And many observers think it is only a matter of time until the rest of Britain’s former colonies, including sovereign states as large as Australia, follow suit with their own heads of state.

But the new republic’s accompanying tilt toward China should concern its former colonial ruler as well as the US.

Barbados and Beijing may seem like unlikely bedfellows, but the warmth of their relations is a miniature case study for the projection of Chinese influence across the world. Both Britain and the US