CHARLES HAILS COLONIAL-FREE BARBADOS.

BRIDGETOWN • Barbados on Monday prepared to remove Queen Elizabeth as its head of state and become a republic, as it severs imperial ties some 400 years after English ships first reached the Caribbean island.

Prince Charles arrived on Sunday night to join the inauguration of President-elect Sandra Mason in replacement of Queen Elizabeth, a move by Barbados to shed the final vestiges of a colonial system that once spanned the globe.

“Tonight’s the night!” read the front-page headline of Barbados’ Daily Nation newspaper.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley, the leader of Barbados’ republican movement, will help lead the ceremony. Mottley has won global attention by denouncing the effects of climate change on small Caribbean nations.

“I think a lot of that is decadent colonialism and it should have been long gone,” said Ras Binghi, a Bridgetown cobbler.

“I’m overjoyed.” Prince Charles will become the first member of the Royal family to formally acknowledge the “appalling atrocity of slavery” in the Caribbean, saying it “forever stains our history.”

The Prince offered words of conciliation and respect to the island nation.

In a speech that was due to be delivered Monday night, after the lowering of the Queen’s Standard for the final time, the Prince was expected to tell a crowd that the creation of the republic offered a “new beginning” for Barbados.

Calling the moment a “milestone on the long road you have not only travelled, but which you have built”, the Prince was due to say: “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.

“Emancipation, self-government and Independence were your way-points. Freedom, justice and self-determination have been your guides. Your long journey has brought you to this moment, not as your destination, but as a vantage point from which to survey a new horizon.”

Barbados will remain a republic within the Commonwealth, a grouping of 54 countries across Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe.

Activist David Denny celebrated the creation of the republic but said he opposes the visit by Prince Charles, noting that the royal family for centuries benefited from the slave trade.

“Our movement would also like the royal family to pay a reparation,” Denny said in an interview.

British colonialists shipped over captured African slaves to work the island’s sugar cane fields and Barbados became a focus of the brutal transatlantic slave trade. Today’s population of under 300,000 is overwhelmingly of African descent.