Grenada's History in One Timeline: From Camáhogne to Independence

Grenada changed hands between France and Britain more than once, survived a slave-era uprising that nearly ended British rule, became one of the world's great nutmeg producers, and went from crown colony to independent state in a little over a century. Most visitors only meet the history in fragments: a French place name here, a fort there, a date painted on a church tower.

This timeline puts those fragments in order. It runs from the first Amerindian settlers to independence in 1974, with the dates that matter and a line or two on why each one still shapes life in Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique. The revolution of 1979 to 1983 has its own article on AZ.GD, so it is only sketched here.

Before Europe: the first Grenadians (c. 300 BCE to 1498)

Around 2,300 years ago. Farming and pottery-making peoples from the Orinoco region of South America settle the island. Archaeologists call their culture Saladoid, after a site in Venezuela, and their decorated ceramics turn up at coastal sites such as Pearls in St Andrew.

Roughly AD 700 to 1200. Later Amerindian communities carve the petroglyphs still visible at Mt Rich in St Patrick and on the shore at Duquesne Bay in St Mark. Pottery styles change over these centuries, which is how archaeologists track successive cultures.

By the 1400s. The people Europeans would call Caribs, today usually referred to as Kalinago, control the island. The French missionary Raymond Breton later recorded their name for it as Camáhogne, the origin of the spelling Camerhogne used by many Grenadian businesses today.

1498. Christopher Columbus sights the island on his third voyage and names it Concepción. He does not land, and Spain never settles it. The name Grenada, probably borrowed from Granada in Spain, is in use on European charts within a few decades.

The French century (1609 to 1762)

1609. A party of English settlers lands but is driven off by the Kalinago within months. Grenada stays in Amerindian hands for another forty years.

1649. Jacques Dyel du Parquet, governor of Martinique, arrives with settlers and makes a purchase agreement with a Kalinago leader, recorded in French sources as paid in knives, beads and brandy. A fortified settlement grows near today's St George's.

1650 to 1654. Relations collapse into war. At the northern cliff now called Leapers' Hill, beside the town of Sauteurs, a group of Kalinago reportedly jump to their deaths rather than surrender. Within a few years organised Kalinago resistance on the island is broken.

1706 to 1710. The French build Fort Royal, today's Fort George, at the mouth of the harbour. Sugar estates worked by enslaved Africans spread along the coasts, and French Catholic culture, place names and Creole language take root.

Tug of war between empires (1762 to 1796)

1762 to 1763. Britain captures Grenada during the Seven Years' War, and the Treaty of Paris confirms the transfer. Fort Royal becomes Fort George, and British planters and Scottish merchants arrive. Tension with the French Catholic planters grows.

1779. A French fleet under the Comte d'Estaing retakes the island after storming Hospital Hill above St George's. The French begin the inland-facing Fort Frederick on Richmond Hill.

1783. The Treaty of Versailles hands Grenada back to Britain, this time for good. Anglican rule brings restrictions on French Catholics and free people of colour, which feeds the next explosion.

1795 to 1796. Julien Fédon, a free planter of mixed race, leads a rebellion inspired by revolutionary France. For more than a year rebels and thousands of enslaved people hold most of the island outside St George's. British forces under Sir Ralph Abercromby end it in June 1796; Fédon is never captured.

Emancipation, nutmeg and the crown colony (1834 to 1950)

Slavery was abolished across the British Caribbean on 1 August 1834, but a system of so-called apprenticeship kept most formerly enslaved people working on estates until 1838. Many then left the plantations to buy or squat on small plots in the hills, laying the foundation of the smallholder farming that still defines rural Grenada. Planters looked abroad for labour: the ship Maidstone landed 287 indentured workers from India at Irwin's Bay in St Patrick on 1 May 1857, the first of around 3,200 who came by 1890. Smaller groups of Maltese and Madeiran workers, and Africans freed from intercepted slave ships, also arrived.

Sugar declined through the nineteenth century while cocoa and spices rose. Nutmeg was introduced in 1843 and, together with cocoa, made Grenada the Spice Isle. In 1877 Grenada became a crown colony, governed directly from London with little local representation. That arrangement lasted until reforms in the early 1950s.

The road to independence (1950 to 1974)

1951. Universal adult suffrage arrives the same year Eric Matthew Gairy, a young trade unionist, leads a general strike of estate workers. Arson on estates gave the period the name Sky Red. Gairy's Grenada United Labour Party dominates politics for most of the next three decades.

1958 to 1962. Grenada joins the short-lived West Indies Federation, which collapses after Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago withdraw.

1967. Grenada becomes an associated state of Britain, running its own internal affairs while London keeps defence and foreign policy.

21 January 1974. On what became known as Bloody Monday, police and Gairy's irregulars attack anti-independence protesters in St George's. Rupert Bishop, father of the future revolutionary leader Maurice Bishop, is shot dead.

7 February 1974. Grenada becomes independent within the Commonwealth, with the British monarch as head of state and Gairy as prime minister. Independence Day is still the country's main national holiday.

Common mix-ups about Grenadian history

A few errors repeat themselves in guidebooks, tour patter and online summaries. Worth knowing before you repeat them:

• Columbus never landed. He saw Grenada from the sea in 1498. There was no Spanish settlement, despite the Spanish-sounding name.
• The Leapers' Hill date is not settled. French accounts and later historians give 1650 or 1651; the Grenada National Trust commemorates the night of 30 May 1650.
• Fédon's Rebellion was not a slave revolt alone. It was led by free coloured planters with French revolutionary backing, and enslaved people fought on both sides, though most joined the rebels.
• Grenada was British for longer than it was French, yet French names dominate the map because the French named the landscape first and the British rarely renamed rural places.
• Independence did not mean a republic. Grenada remains a constitutional monarchy, with a Governor-General representing the Crown.
• The 1983 intervention came after the revolution's collapse, not as a response to the 1979 takeover itself. The two events are four and a half years apart.

Where to see this timeline on the ground

Much of this history can be traced in a single day around St George's. Fort George, begun by the French in 1706, guards the harbour mouth; Fort Frederick on Richmond Hill shows the French capture of 1779 and the British return of 1783 in stone. The Grenada National Museum on Young Street occupies a building that began as French barracks and later served as a prison and a hotel, and its displays run from Amerindian pottery to the twentieth century.

Further afield, the petroglyphs at Mt Rich and Duquesne Bay represent the Amerindian centuries, Leapers' Hill in Sauteurs the French conquest, and the forested ridge below Mount Qua Qua the Fédon rebellion. Old estate houses, sugar mill ruins and water wheels across St Patrick, St Andrew and St David tell the plantation story, while the indentured Indian arrival is remembered at Irwin's Bay each 1 May. On Carriacou, the museum in Hillsborough and the Big Drum tradition carry a parallel history shaped by African nations and Scottish shipwrights. Opening hours and conditions at all of these sites change, so confirm before travelling.

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