Grenada #2 (1861) GRENADA #2 (1861) Grenada is an island country consisting of Grenada itself and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea. Grenada is located northwest of Trinidad and Tobago, northeast of Venezuela, and southwest of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Major towns there include the capital, St. George’s, Grenville and Gouyave. The island is of volcanic origin with extremely rich soil. Grenada’s interior is very mountainous with Mount St. Catherine being the highest at 2,760 feet (840 meters). Several small rivers with beautiful waterfalls flow into the sea from these mountains. Grenada is also known as the “Island of Spice” because of the production of nutmeg and mace crops, of which it is one of the world’s largest exporters. Its size is 133 square miles (344 square kilometers), with an estimated population of 110,000. As a Commonwealth realm, Queen Elizabeth II is Queen of Grenada and Head of State. The Crown is represented by a Governor-General, currently Cécile La Grenade. The national bird of Grenada is the critically endangered Grenada dove. Grenada was formed as an underwater volcano about two million years ago. Before the arrival of Europeans, Grenada was inhabited by Caribs who had driven the more peaceful Arawaks from the island. Christopher Columbus sighted Grenada in 1498 during his third voyage to the new world. He named the island “Concepción.” The origin of the name “Grenada” is obscure, but it is likely that Spanish sailors renamed the island for the city of Granada. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the name “Grenada”, or “la Grenade” in French, was in common use. Partly because of the Caribs, Grenada remained uncolonized for more than one hundred years after its discovery. In June 1609, the first attempt at settlement by Europeans was made by an English expedition of 24 adventurers led by Mossis Goldfry, Hall, Lull, and Robincon, who arrived in the ships Diana, Penelope, and Endeavour. The settlement was attacked and destroyed by the indigenous islanders and many killed and tortured. The few survivors were evacuated when the ships returned on December 15, 1609. On March 17, 1649, a French expedition of 203 men from Martinique, led by Jacques Dyel du Parquet who had been the Governor of Martinique on behalf of the Compagnie des Iles de l’Amerique (Company of the Isles of America) since 1637, landed at St. Georges Harbour and constructed a fortified settlement, which they named Fort Annunciation. A treaty was swiftly agreed between du Parquet and the indigenous Chief Kairouane to peacefully partition the island between the two communities. Du Parquet returned to Martinique leaving his cousin Jean Le Comte as Governor of Grenada. Conflict broke out between the French and the indigenous islanders in November 1649 and fighting lasted for five years until 1654, when the last opposition to the French on Grenada was crushed. Rather than surrender, Kairouane and his followers chose to throw themselves off a cliff, a fact celebrated in the poetry of Jan Carew. The island continued for some time after to suffer raids by war canoe parties from St. Vincent, whose inhabitants had aided the local Grenadian islanders in their struggle and continued to oppose the French. On September 27, 1650, du Parquet bought Grenada, Martinique, and St. Lucia from the Compagnie des Iles de l’Amerique, which was dissolved, for the equivalent of £1160. In 1657, du Parquet sold Grenada to the Comte de Cerrillac for the equivalent of £1890. In 1664, King Louis XIV bought out the independent island owners and established the French West India Company. In 1674, the French West India Company was dissolved. Proprietary rule ended in Grenada, which became a French colony as a dependency of Martinique. In 1675, Dutch privateers captured Grenada, but a French man-of-war arrived unexpectedly and recaptured the island. In 1700, Grenada had a population of 257 whites, 53 coloreds, and 525 slaves. There were three sugar estates, 52 indigo plantations, 64 horses, and 569 head of cattle. Between 1705 and 1710, the French built Fort Royal at St. George’s which is now known as Fort George. The collapse of the sugar estates and the introduction of cocoa and coffee in 1714 encouraged the development of smaller land holdings, and the island developed a land-owning yeoman farmer class. In 1738, the first hospital was constructed. Grenada was captured by the British during the Seven Years’ War on March 4, 1762, by Commodore Swanton without a shot being fired. The island was formally ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763. In 1766, the island was rocked by a severe earthquake. In 1767, a slave uprising was put down. In 1771 and again in 1775, the town of St. George, which was constructed solely of wood, was burnt to the ground after which it was sensibly rebuilt using stone and brick. France recaptured Grenada between July 2 and 4, 1779, during the American War of Independence, after Comte d’Estaing stormed Hospital Hill. A British relief force was defeated in the naval Battle of Grenada on July 6, 1779. However, the island was restored to Britain with the Treaty of Versailles four years later on September 3, 1783. In 1784, the first newspaper, the Grenada Chronicle, began publication. Julien Fédon, a mixed race owner of the Belvedere estate in the St. John Parish, launched a rebellion against British rule on the night of March 2, 1795, with coordinated attacks on the towns of Grenville, La Baye and Gouyave. Fédon was clearly influenced by the ideas emerging from the French Revolution, especially the Convention’s abolition of slavery in 1794: he stated that he intended to make Grenada a “Black Republic just like Haiti”. Fédon and his troops controlled all of Grenada except the parish of St George’s, the seat of government, between March 1795 and June 1796. During those insurgent months, 14,000 of Grenada’s 28,000 slaves joined the revolutionary forces in order to write their own emancipation and transform themselves into “citizens”; some 7,000 of these self-liberated slaves would perish in the name of freedom. The British defeated Fédon’s forces in late 1796, but they never caught Fédon himself, and his fate is unknown. In 1833, Grenada became part of the British Windward Islands Administration and remained so until 1958. Slavery was abolished in 1834. Nutmeg was introduced in 1843, when a merchant ship called in on its way to England from the East Indies. In 1857, the first East Indian immigrants arrived. The earliest recorded postmark of the British administration of Grenada dates from 1764. Like the other Windward Islands, Grenada was under control of the British GPO in London In addition to a packet agency at St. George’s, there was a further agency at Carriacou in the Grenadines, which opened on September 15, 1847, and operated for just a few years. British stamps were supplied to the St. George’s office starting in April 1858, postmarked with obliterator A15 of St. Georges until the colony assumed responsibility for the postal service on May 1, 1860. The first stamps of Grenada were issued on June 3, 1861, in the values of 1 penny (green) and 6 pence (rose) portraying a portrait of Queen Victoria by Alfred Edward Chalon (1780–1860). In 1871, Grenada was connected to the telegraph. The first secondary school was built in 1872. On December 3, 1877, the pure Crown colony model replaced Grenada’s old representative system of government. On December 3, 1882, the largest wooden jetty ever built in Grenada was opened in Gouyave. In 1885, after Barbados left the British Windward Islands, the capital of the colonial confederation was moved from Bridgetown to St. George on Grenada. From 1889-1894 the 340 foot Sendall Tunnel was built for horse carriages. The 1901 census showed that the population of the colony was 63,438. In 1917, Theophilus A. Marryshow founded the Representative Government Association (RGA) to agitate for a new and participative constitutional dispensation for the Grenadian people. Partly as a result of Marryshow’s lobbying the Wood Commission of 1921-1922 concluded that Grenada was ready for constitutional reform in the form of a ‘modified’ Crown Colony government. This modification granted Grenadians from 1925 the right to elect 5 of the 15 members of the Legislative Council, on a restricted property franchise enabling the wealthiest 4% of Grenadian adults to vote. In 1928, electricity was installed in St. George’s. In 1943, Pearls Airport was opened. On August 5, 1944, the Island Queen schooner disappeared with the loss of all 56 passengers and 11 crew. In 1950, Grenada had its constitution amended to increase the number of elected seats on the Legislative Council from 5 to 8, to be elected by full adult franchise at the 1951 election. In 1950, Eric Gairy founded the Grenada United Labour Party, initially as a trades union, which led the 1951 general strike for better working conditions. This sparked great unrest — so many buildings were set ablaze that the disturbances became known as the ‘red sky’ days — and the British authorities had to call in military reinforcements to help regain control of the situation. On October 10, 1951, Grenada held its first general elections on the basis of universal adult suffrage. United Labour won 6 of the 8 elected seats on the Legislative Council in both the 1951 and 1954 elections. However the Legislative Council had few powers at this time, with government remaining fully in the hands of the colonial authorities.