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History
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Long before Columbus sighted Grenada and named it
Concepcion
(the name Grenada was given by homesick Spanish sailors and adopted by the British) on his third voyage to the Americas in 1498, Grenada had been settled by a series of migrating Amerindian peoples. Its first known residents were the
Ciboney
, who populated much of the Eastern Caribbean and left little but a few artefacts and petroglyphs behind. The Ciboney were replaced or absorbed by
Arawaks
, who came to the island by way of Venezuela and the outflow of the Orinoco River. In turn, the Arawaks were invaded and enslaved by the
Caribs
, who were making their way up through the islands from Guyana.
The British were the first Europeans to attempt to settle the island in 1609, followed in 1650 by the French , whose first town sank into the mouth of St George's lagoon. These efforts were fiercely resisted by the Caribs. In 1651, the French took decisive action against the Caribs, pushing them north to Sauteurs where, rather than surrender to French control, they threw themselves off a cliff, now known as Caribs' Leap and, ironically, marked by a Catholic church. Control of Grenada passed between France and Britain as part of the settlements of various treaties, while both countries established plantations of indigo, tobacco, coffee, cocoa and sugar, worked by African slaves, until the French ceded the island to Britain in the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the French-brokered agreement which formally ended the American War of Independence. In 1795 Julian Fedon , a mulatto planter, led a peasant rebellion based on the principles of the French Revolution and controlled most of the island for fourteen months before the rebels were crushed by British reinforcements. British rule was stable throughout the nineteenth century, a peace that culminated in 1877 with Grenada being granted Crown colony status and a measure of independence. In 1967, Grenada became a semi-independent state within the British Commonwealth and seven years later an independent country. By that time, control of the government was firmly in the hands of Eric Gairy , a union leader who had led the resistance to British rule since the 1950s. During the 1970s, Gairy's rule became increasingly dictatorial and his secret police ( the Mongoose Gang ) more notorious in their corruption and their suppression of the opposition. Gairy was ousted from power on March 13, 1979, by a bloodless coup led by Maurice Bishop, the charismatic leader of the left-wing New Jewell Movement whose father had been killed during demonstrations against Gairy's rule. Bishop's Revolutionary Government became a pawn of the Cold War, supported by Cuba, Nicaragua and the Soviet Union but reviled by the United States. The period of Revolutionary Government came to an end in 1983 with Bishop's imprisonment by enemies within his own government and an American-led invasion - on the pretext of evacuating American medical students from the island, but having more to do with the fear of increased Soviet influence in the Caribbean.
Grenada's first post-revolution elections were held in 1985 and won by
Herbert Blaize
, Gairy's political opponent from the 1950s and 1960s. More recently, a shadow was cast over the country's leadership by the investigation of Dr Keith Mitchell, leader of the parliamentary government, and his alleged links to the collapse of a bank that supported him during his election campaign. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Grenada,
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