Those less familiar with Charleston's history might not understand our strong links with the Caribbean's easternmost island, a small nation that marked a major milestone Tuesday. During the day's earliest hours, while most of us were still in bed, Barbados held a formal ceremony to become a republic, officially cutting its ties with Queen Elizabeth II and casting off one of the last remaining vestiges of its colonial past.
Its first president, Sandra Mason, a former governor general who was appointed by the queen, took her oath as hundreds of officials, including Prince Charles, looked on in person and thousands more watched on television screens that carried the broadcast across the island.
Rhoda Green of Charleston, CEO of the Barbados and the Carolinas Legacy Foundation and Barbados' longtime honorary consul to South Carolina, has followed the transition and hopes the change strengthens ties between the island and our city and state that she has helped build over the years.
"There’s great interest in the connection to the Carolinas," she tells us. "Do I think it will change? No. There are so many connections. It's hard not to see them."
To fully understand them, we must go back to the early 17th century, when Barbados was England's first major colony in the New World. Decades later, many of Carolina's first settlers came here from Barbados, and they brought with them that island's model of governance and the development of its plantation economy. Indeed, Barbados remains divided into parishes with names that many Lowcountry residents would recognize: St. Michael, St. Philip, St. James, St. George, St. Andrews, Christ Church and the like.
It's also a fraught shared history: The small confines of the island — its area is about one-seventh the size of Berkeley County — increased pressure on England to stake a claim on the North American mainland. The planters of Barbados created the rigid social structures and harsh slave codes that enabled its elite white leadership to control a colony whose population increasingly consisted of enslaved people from Africa, and a similar dynamic played out here. Barbados' hugely successful crop was sugar cane; Carolina's would be rice.
Prince Charles' remarks Tuesday took note of this: "From the darkest days of our past, and the appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history, the people of this island forged their path with extraordinary fortitude. ... Tonight you write the next chapter of your nation’s story. You are the guardians of your heritage."
Barbados gained its independence exactly 55 years before Tuesday's ceremony. It remains part of the Commonwealth, an association of 54 countries that formerly were part of the British Empire, and Ms. Green notes that links 400 years in the making aren't easily set aside. Many of its younger inhabitants are increasingly interested in tracing their ancestry and ties back to Africa. Meanwhile, Charleston is scheduled to open its International African American Museum next year, a new institution that will explore our ties to Africa and the diverse journeys of Africans and their descendants across the New World.
Charleston and Barbados also share a new kind of economic link: tourism. Tuesday's transition comes as the island is struggling with a drop in visitors because of the pandemic.
Centuries ago, Barbados helped give Charles Towne and the Carolina colony a distinct culture, different from other English settlements in North America. And now it shares a new commonality with us: full independence from the Crown. “Today, we set our compass to a new direction,” Ms. Mason said, according to The New York Times. “We believe that the time has come for us to claim our full destiny."
It's a time for us to look back, but also forward as well. We agree with Ms. Green when she says, "Understanding the history that binds is key to understanding the future we are setting up for the next generation.”
