Grenada

Grenada is a Caribbean nation-state located in the southern part of the Windward Islands. Consisting of 133 square miles and an estimated 107,000 inhabitants (2006), Grenada is composed of three islands: Grenada proper and the smaller islands of Carriacou and Petit-Martinique. The islands were populated by Carib Indians who offered fierce resistance to European settlers until 1654, when the last Caribs committed suicide to avoid capture by the French colonizers.

French rule lasted for over a century and resulted in the importation of African slaves whose descendants make up the majority of Grenada's population today. The French introduced Roman Catholicism, which is still Grenada's predominant religion. The establishment of British control in 1783 brought an increase in the number of slaves, a worsening of their treatment, and the attempt to suppress the Roman Catholic faith. In 1795 a Grenadian mulatto, Julien Fedon, launched a revolt in order to restore French rule. His rebellion turned into a massive slave insurrection that took the British fifteen months to crush.

Facing competition from larger sugar producers as well as the abolition of slavery (1838), Grenada's plantation owners switched from sugar to the production of cocoa and spices (particularly nutmeg and mace) by the second half of the nineteenth century. During the same period, the development of commerce produced a native bourgeoisie that resented the monopoly of power held by the British crown and the plantocracy, and demanded a voice in the political life of Grenada. Theophilus Albert Marryshow became the leader of this rising class, which he represented in Grenada's Legislative Council during the first half of the twentieth century. Also influential in Grenada's working-class politics was Tubal Uriah "Buzz" Butler.

Trade unions were legalized on Grenada in 1933, but they organized only the urban workers. The agricultural laborers continued to live in abject poverty until 1950, when they found a champion in Eric M. Gairy, who organized them in his Grenada Manual and Mental Workers' Union (GMMWU) and the Grenada United Labour Party (GULP). During 1951, Gairy was able to wring concessions from the landlords by violent strikes and demonstrations in the countryside. He dominated Grenadian politics until 1979.

It became apparent that Gairy was neglecting his constituents when he entered into questionable business ventures and tried to ingratiate himself with the British colonial authorities and Grenada's elite. Given that the only political opposition, Herbert A. Blaize's Grenadian National Party, championed the upper class, it is not surprising that the majority of Grenadians preferred the corrupt Gairy to the elitist Blaize. It was not until 1973 that Gairy met the real challenge of the New Jewel Movement (NJM), which appealed to the same social strata as he did. Gairy responded by dispatching his terrorist Mongoose Gang. With the granting of independence to Grenada on 7 February 1974, now Prime Minister Gairy cast off all restraints and established a quasi-dictatorship that was despised throughout the Caribbean. On 13 March 1979, the New Jewel Movement toppled Gairy, who was in New York City at the time, in a bloodless coup. Grenadians hailed his ouster.

It was soon evident, however, that Grenada had exchanged one dictator for another. While Maurice Bishop's party (the People's Revolutionary Government) introduced educational and health reforms and began construction of a needed international airport, the elections that the NJM had promised never materialized. Instead, all opposition newspapers and organizations were prohibited and critics of the new regime found themselves incarcerated. In the autumn of 1983, tensions within the revolutionary leadership led to fratricidal strife between Bishop and his deputy, Bernard Coard. Bishop and some of his closest advisers were executed on 19 October 1983. The subsequent Revolutionary Military Council was deposed on 25 October, when troops from the United States and various Caribbean islands invaded Grenada.

The first postinvasion national elections were held in December 1984. Herbert Blaize, representing the New National Party (NNP), became prime minister, an office he held until his death in December 1989. His tenure was marked by close friendship with the Reagan administration, large contributions of U.S. aid, the expansion of tourism as the country's major industry, and reprisals against former supporters of the Bishop regime. Since then, Grenada's Truth and Conciliation Commission and the Committee for Human Rights in Grenada (UK) (CHRGUK) have demanded new trials for members of the "Grenada 17," those charged with and imprisoned for the deaths of Bishop and other government supporters. New hearings, they maintain, will help close the deep fissures within Grenadian society produced by the era of Gairy and the subsequent Grenadian revolution.

The less conservative and more popular National Democratic Congress government of Nicholas Brathwaite was elected in 1990, though the center-right NNP returned and has remained in power since 1995. Keith Mitchell, a leader of the NNP, was elected prime minister in 1994, 1999, and 2003.

Hurricane Ivan in 2004 caused severe damage to homes, buildings, and the nutmeg crop, of which Grenada, the "isle of spice," is the world's second-largest producer. Hurricane Emily struck the northern islands in 2005. Although rebuilding proceeded quickly, the tourism and agricultural sectors struggled to return to pre-hurricane levels.

See alsoSlavery: Abolition; Slave Trade; Windward Islands.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Raymund P. Devas, The Island of Grenada, 1650–1950 (1964).

Patrick Emmanuel, Crown Colony Politics in Grenada, 1917–1951 (1978).

Tony Thorndike, Grenada (1985).

Steve Clark, "The Second Assassination of Maurice Bishop," in New International 6 (1987): 11-96.

Kai P. Schoenhals, Grenada (1990).

Additional Bibliography

Crandall, Russell. Gunboat Democracy: U.S. Interventions in the Dominican Republic, Grenada, and Panama. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.

McDaniel, Lorna. The Big Drum Ritual of Carriacou: Praisesongs in Rememory of Flight. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.

Noguera, Pedro A. The Imperatives of Power: Political Change and the Social Basis of Regime Support in Grenada from 1951–1991. New York: P. Lang, 1997.

Steele, Beverley A. Grenada: A History of Its People. Oxford, UK: Macmillan Caribbean, 2003.

                                          Kai P. Schoenhals