Le Morne de Sauters, variously translated as “Leaper’s Hill” or “Carib’s Leap” blends into Grenada’s coastline- cliffs as seamlessly as its tragic baptism hides within the manifold history of the Caribbean’s Spice Island. For it is here that the island’s longest surviving aboriginal inhabitants, the Caribs, would make their infamous and final stand against European agressors. Depicted as a fierce, warrior nation of man-eaters, as no doubt they were (much to the, albeit, brief chagrin of early European “explorers”), the Caribs likely sailed from what is present-day Brazil to the shores of Granada (c. 1400 A.D.), known to them as Camerhogue. The last of the aboriginal nations to arrive at the island, during its three thousand years of pre-European habitation, the Caribs were preceded by several tribes originating in the Amazon Basin of South America - the Calvignoid, the Galibi, the Suazoids and the Arawak among them. A disquieting presence among their Amerindian neighbours, and the cause behind many of their departures, the war-like Caribs would soon prove to be a surprising and lasting obstacle to the beginnings of European settlement.
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Renamed Concepción for the Virgin Mary by Columbus upon his third voyage to “The New World” in 1498, Grenada was to yet again be re-dubbed Mayo by Alfonso de Hojeda (1500) and company. Valued only as a temporary stop en route to the more legendary riches of South America, the island’s beauty would later merit the name of Granada (1523) by passing Spanish sailors nostalgic for their Andalusian home.
As the British were to find in 1609, it was not only the promise of greater bounty elsewhere that hindered permanent European landing on the island. Begun by a small group of 208 merchants intent on the cultivation of tobacco, the settlement of Margin Town was immediately disbanded upon acquaintanceship with the locals. Almost three decades later the French were to fare no better as the Carib nation again and again proved fiercely resistant to all attempts at European colonization. However, over a century and a half of native resistance would come to a devastating conclusion with the arrival of the French Du Parquet.
Perhaps identifying the French as preferable to the British (who had lately decimated the Caribs of nearby St. Kitts) or seeing them as potential allies against continual British encroachment, Carib resistance was to come to a brief halt with the arrival of Du Parquet, colonial Governor of Martinique. As history has traditionally told it, the Governor was able to “purchase” extensive tracts of land from the Carib for the paltry offerings of a handful of glass beads, iron hatchets and a few bottles of grog. Whether the idea of “purchase” or even ownership of land was mutually understood or if indeed this transaction only occurred in its retelling (history delights in eccentric details), the Caribs before very long were again on the defensive. Faced with the prospect of French rule the tribe mounted a series of losing battles against the inhabitants of the growing settlement, at what was to become the present capital of St. George’s (1651).
Weary but unrelenting in their strikes against the colonial occupiers, who were eager to begin plantations of coca, sugar and tobacco, one hundred and fifty years of Carib resistance was to come to a head with the arrival of hundreds of French reinforcements. Losing ground and faced with the prospect of immediate execution at the hands of their aggressors or the slower death of enslavement, the Caribs raced north for the island’s cliffs. From the summit of Carib’s Leap, men, women and children took their final steps from their homeland of centuries and plunged into the treacherous depths where the Caribbean Sea met the Atlantic Ocean. The colonizers had won and Grenada, or La Granade, would soon become an official colony of the French Crown (1672) and, with the exception of a brief takeover by Dutch privateers in 1700, the island would remain in French hands until 1763.
Yet, the demise of the Caribs was no guarantee of stability as the island was continually shunted back and forth between the French and the British. Ceded to the English by the 1763 signing of the Treaty of Paris, when the island came upon its present name of Grenada, the French were to briefly recapture it in 1779. Growing infrastructure, i.e. roads and the first hospital (1738) and the bustling town of Port Royal (1710) began to mark more of the embattled landscape. Fort George and Fort Frederick today stand as relics of this period of inter-colonial strife. However, in 1783 Grenada would permanently come under the auspices of the British through the Treaty of Versaille. From this moment the island would come to bear what has become the largest historical imprint left from that period of the colonial plantation system, slavery.
Not only witness to the tragic fate of Grenada’s Caribs, the Atlantic also became the final resting place of hundreds of casualties of the colonial ships, transporting human cargo from Africa to the New World. Bound for labour upon the many plantations of the Caribbean and North and South America, African men, women and children were to know a level of brutality that only began with the slave-ship galley. Chained head to foot, often piled atop one another, many would succumb to conditions of terror and sickness, compounded by sorrow and loss for the homes from which they had been kidnapped. The thousands that survived, would be part of the, reportedly, ten to fifteen million slaves who were successfully transported across the Atlantic for life on the plantation.
Far from an invention of the British, Grenadian slave history began with the French, who in 1700 registered a slave population of 525, nearly twice that of the white settlers. However, having gained full control of the island, the British were responsible for the largest shipments of slaves for labour upon sprawling sugar plantations. However, by the mid-18th century, natural disasters and other factors contributed to the transition from sugar to spice with the introduction of nutmeg, for which the islands’ soil proved ideal and Grenada assumed a more esteemed place within the colonial market. The vigorous economy surrounding spice cultivation (closer than shipments from the Dutch West Indies) and the collapse of the sugar economy led to the development of smaller plots and the creation of a land-holding farmer class which boasted free-coloured farmers among them, including Julien Fedon.
Variously inspired by the French Revolution, one of the islands many disaffected French (having to deal with British administration and the mores of the Anglican Church) and himself a Black planter, Fedon was to go down in history for the Fedon Rebellion of 1795. Inciting the slave population to rise up against colonial masters, Fedun and company were able to gain almost complete control of Grenada. Though the rebellion was violently crushed by British forces soon after, tensions between plantation-owners and slaves (and for that matter between French and British) continued to simmer until the Free Coloured population received political and civil rights in 1832 and slavery was finally abolished two years later (1834).
Inasmuch as every colonial enterprise has subsisted upon the servitude of an exploited population, Grenada’s plantation society, as was the case of many others throughout the Caribbean, refused to yield to the wage-demands of the newly freed slaves. By the end of the 18th century, Grenada’s wide acclaim as The Isle of Spice opted for yet another type of consigned labour to be instituted under the new system of Indentureship. Lured with, often empty, promises of land and eventual wealth, people from poverty-stricken regions of India were soon bound for Grenadian plantations. Though conditions, far less harsh than those of the preceding African experience, indentured labourers were still subject to back-breaking labour, blatant mistreatment and next to no accountability (civil or political) of their rights by the island’s colonial administration.
Part of the Windward Islands Administration in 1833, Grenada was officially made a Crown Colony by 1877. With the dissolution of the colonial administration in 1958 (by the end of the Colonial period), Grenada joined the Federation of the West Indies, which lasted until 1962. Following the failure of an effort to model a federation among its remaining dependencies, the British developed a system of associated statehood in 1967, granting states, including Grenada, autonomous powers over internal affairs. Less than ten years later, Grenada along with the neighboring Grenadine Islands of Carriacou and Petit Martinique would achieve Independence on February 7th, 1974. The end of colonialism did not, however, mean the end of Grenada’s tumultuous history. Indeed, it was to garner world-wide attention with the emergence of the New Jewel Movement and the establishment of a People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) under the leadership of Maurice Bishop.
Headed by the charismatic Sir Eric Gairy, Grenada’s first post-Independence government was based upon a modified version of the British Westminster parliament, with a Governor General representing the English monarch as head of state, while the Prime Minister represented the island’s majority party. However, fraught with allegations of nearly wide-spread corruption, the Gairy government was ousted in a bloodless coup (March 13, 1979) led by the lawyer and activist Bishop. Maurice Bishop and his party represented a platform of several core values; nationalization and democratic distribution of all national resources, the destruction of the traditional class system and equal access to state subsidized healthcare, education and all institutions aiding in basic human rights. Not only spurred on by local politics, this movement for social liberation was indicative of a more global politic. Black Consciousness was gaining ground from the Black Panthers of the United States to the new intelligentsia in and around the Third World and marginal communities in the West. Stokely Carmichael, Che Guevara, Malcolm X and Mao Tse Tung were the figures of resistance in a time of growing neo-colonial upheaval. Castro’s Cuba had become the bane of U.S. Imperialism and the beacon for the numerous smaller states struggling for economic, political and social self-determination in the seemingly interminable struggle between Cold War behemoths, America and the Soviet Union.
Unnerved by the establishment of Bishop’s Marxist-Leninist government and its subsequent ties with Cuba and other leftist governments, U.S. President Ronald Reagan paid close attention to Cuba’s aid in the construction of a national airport. Meanwhile, with swift and popular support from many of the nation’s citizens, Bishop began to make good on promises of legislation for human rights and economic reform. However, the hopes of Bishop and the People’s Revolutionary Government came to an unceremonious end with Bishop’s overthrow and imprisonment by militant radicals from within the party, headed by Bernard Coard, in 1983. Events were soon to turn bloody, beginning with a spontaneous protest of thousands demanding Bishop’s release. As soldiers opened fire upon the crowd, the killing of forty protestors was followed by the imprisonment and execution of Bishop and several of his supporters.
Whatever the reasons behind the military coup, the United States soon found ample opportunity for a military invasion (or intervasion) under the name of “Operation Urgent Fury”. Summoned by Grenada’s governor general, and with the pledge of military support from several Eastern Caribbean states and Jamaica, a total of approximately 5,000 U.S. troops and their allies would stand against a greatly outnumbered resistance of Grenadians, Cubans, Libyans, North Koreans, etc. Now known as the first war between Cuba and the United States, Operation Urgent Fury sprung from a number of underlying factors. From U.S. Cold War paranoia over a “growing Communist scourge” to more calculated reasons of deflecting attention from other less successful endeavors on the international and national fronts, many theories exist. For its part, the U.S. continues to hold to explanations of trying to avert a Cuban takeover of the island, the protection of 400 American medical students in Grenada and the need to restore a more U.S. brand of democracy to the island. For better or worse Grenada came to experience the United States’ policy of military might, unilateralism (despite criticism from many of its allies) and its refusal of unshepherded media coverage, a policy which would not end with its eventual success on the island.
After many deaths (most on the opposing side), an advisory council (appointed by the governor general) was instated until general elections (December 1984) ushered in the New National Party under the leadership of Herbert Blaize.
Today Grenada, including the smaller islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique, is not only known as a Caribbean paradise but continues to be one of the world’s greatest spice-producing regions. Yet, as the island continues to stand as a proud testament to a past of numerous upheavals, tragedies and victories, perhaps its greatest resource is the one it shares with many of its Caribbean neighbours, a largely unwritten but difficult to ignore history - A history which retains as resolute a presence within the body of its citizens as it does within the poetry of its cliffs and climes.
Capital:
Saint George's
Physical Geography:
This hilly terrain reaches its highest point at Mount Saint Catherine (840 m.).
Population:
The majority of the islands’ population are of African ancestry, followed by mixed descendants of African and European and European and East Indian roots, with a trace of Arawak/Carib influence.
Languages:
Where English is Grenada’s official language, French influence is still present within the local patois.
Governmental Structure:
Constitutional monarchy with Westminster-style parliament
Main Political Parties:
GULP [Grenada United Labor Party]
NDC [National Democratic Congress]
NNP [New National Party]
Religions:
The Roman Catholic majority is closely followed by those of the Protestant faith, Anglicans round out the population’s dominant religions.
Climate:
Lying on the edge of a hurricane belt, the windy season runs from June to November, before returning to a normally tropical climate of moderate northeast trade winds.
Currency:
East Caribbean dollar (XCD)
Exports/Commodities:
Bananas, cocoa, nutmeg, fruit and vegetables, clothing, mace.
Natural Resources:
Timber, tropical fruit, deepwater harbors.
News/Links:
Grenada Star: http://www.grenadastar.com/
Grenada Newspaper and Business Journal: http://www.barnaclegrenada.com/
Grenada Informer: http://www.spicegrenada.com/
