Grenada Slavery
During the European colonization of Grenada, it is estimated that over 129,000 enslaved were brought to the island between 1669 1808 (just after the British abolished the slave trade in 1807), although it is likely higher because numbers during the French period are patchy (Martin 2007).
The first official census was conducted in 1669, when Grenada’s population was 506 (not including Amerindians), with 222 enslaved (Martin 2013:119). As in most islands, the slave population would overtake the free population during the French period (1659- 1762; reaching 15,200 enslaved in 1763) (Martin 2013:Table 7.4), but would not reach the levels seen after the 1763 British takeover.
The French colony regularly complained to Martinique about the lack of slave ships passing Grenada, but French plantations also tended to be small plots, focused on crops like indigo, cocoa, coffee, cotton, and some sugar cane. During the British period, the latter exploded, collapsing small farm plots into large sugar plantations and creating an insatiable appetite for enslaved labor.
Slave Prisons in Grenada
In Grenada, during slavery, the places of confinement were “Slave Yards” for the sale of newly arrived captives, and Public Cages for the incarceration of runaway enslaved or maroons. Slave Yards were located mainly along the Carenage and a few other places in St George’s, where enslaved were held for sale by slave factors or merchants after being unloaded from slave ships; captives were also sold directly off slave ships anchored on the Carenage . A 1799 newspaper advertisement listed “Lamolie’s House” as a place of sale of captive Africans, which would have been most likely in the present parking lot of the First Caribbean International Bank on Church Street; it also lists the “Store of Ker and Co in the Carenage” (Figure 6), as well as The Long Room (an auction house near Fort George).
Enslaved were sometimes confined in the public jail (on Young Street in what is today known as the Drill Yard), which was primarily for free people (white and non-white), and “The persons confined in the gaol are debtors, criminals, delinquents under the Militia Act, and slaves taken in execution.” More often than not, enslaved were held in Public Cages usually located in the major towns. In 1824, Grenada had four cages (including one in Carriacou) where “…not only are runaways and disorderly slaves confined in these as in other colonies (where the cage is usually and fitly considered to be only a receptacle or lock-up place for the night), but delinquent slaves are sent thither for all sorts of misdemeanors, sometimes for confinement, and sometimes for corporal punishment. In the cage in George Town (sic) [in the Market Square], the slaves confined there have no yard to exercise in…” (Grenada 1832). Enslaved were also confined on plantations in stocks or locally built structures that were mostly of a temporary nature.
Grenadian people of largely African descent. This term is not generally recognized by Grenadians or indeed Caribbeans. They usually refer to themselves simply as Black or possibly Black Caribbean.
On 17 March 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. By 1700, Grenada had a population of 257 French (whites) and 53 coloureds with 525 enslaved Africans to work on 3 sugar estates and 52 indigo plantations.
More than half a century later, when Grenada was captured by the British during the Seven Years’ War (1762) and formally ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Paris, the English began to import their own enslaved Africans for use on their cotton, sugar, and tobacco plantations. It is believed that most of the slaves who were imported to Grenada embarked from Nigeria (specifically Igbo and Yoruba, more than 37,000, 34% of the enslaved people of the island) and Ghana (Fante people, more than 18,000, 19% of the enslaved people of the island).To a lesser extent, enslaved people were also imported from Senegambia (more than 5,000, 4.9% of the slaves of the island), Guinea, Sierra Leone (more than 12,000, 11% of the slaves of the island), Windward Coast (more than 14,000, 13% of the enslaved people of the island), Bight of Benin (more than 5,800, 5,4% of the slaves of the island), Congo (specifically Kongos) and Angola. The slaves of Central Africa numbered more than 12,000 people, 11% of the enslaved of Grenada. Many of the enslaved people were also Mandinka. The first British census of Grenada, in 1700, recorded 525 slaves and 53 freed from slavery living on the island. Julien Fédon, a mulatto plantation owner of the Belvedere estate in the St. John Parish, led a violent rebellion against British rule on the night of 2 March 1795. Clearly influenced by the ideas emerging from the French Revolution, especially the Convention’s abolition of slavery in 1794, Fédon and his troops took control of all of Grenada (except the parish of St. George’s, the seat of government), who afterward freed the slaves who participated in the rebellion. The struggle of the enslaved for their rights continued for a year and a half (between March 1795 and June 1796), until the British regained control of the island. The British, as a punishment for disobedience and rebellion, executed the alleged leaders of the rebellion, however, Fédon was never captured.
Slavery was eventually abolished in 1834 but included a six-year apprentice period that was abandoned in 1838. The 1833 Act of Emancipation, which freed over 23,600 enslaved in Grenada, was made possible in part through the compensation of Grenada’s plantation owners totaling £616,255 (the equivalent of £75,014,450 in 2020) . The formerly enslaved received nothing and many continued to work on the same plantations as wage laborers. Enslaved people were freed by 1 August 1838.
Resource Wiki and Grenada National Musuem.