Grenada

• 1. Island Of Spice

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  Grenada is the smallest of the eastern Caribbean's spice nations, and yet its national flag carries a nutmeg. That single image hints at how much one tree shaped a country. Grenada sits in the eastern Caribbean Sea, the southernmost of the Windward Islands, just south of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and roughly 100 miles north of Trinidad. It is an archipelagic country: the main island plus Carriacou, Petite Martinique, and several smaller islands stretching north into the Grenadines. Its total size is 344 square kilometres. In 2024 its population was estimated at 114,621 people, most of them living on the main island around the capital, St. George's. The nickname "Island of Spice" comes from its nutmeg and mace crops. But how did spices arrive on a volcanic rock that rose from a shallow sea two million years ago? Who lived here first, who fought over the harbour, and why did this small place draw warships, slave ships, and eventually a United States invasion? The answers run through revolution, hurricanes, and a single Olympic sprinter who put Grenada on the medal podium.

• 2. A Name In Dispute

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  Christopher Columbus sighted the island in 1498 during his third voyage and named it "La Concepción" in honour of the Virgin Mary. The record is murky. He may have intended "Assumpción", having spotted what are now Grenada and Tobago from a distance and named both at once. Convention later settled it: Tobago became "Assumpción" and Grenada "La Concepción". The year after, in 1499, Amerigo Vespucci passed through with the Spanish explorer Alonso de Ojeda and mapmaker Juan de la Cosa. Vespucci is reported to have renamed the island "Mayo", though it appears on only that one map. The name that stuck has obscure origins. Spanish sailors likely named the island for the city of Granada, a name recorded on Spanish maps in the 1520s. Those maps called the islands to the north Los Granadillos, meaning "Little Granadas". The French kept the name as "La Grenade" after settling in 1649, and the British later anglicised it to "Grenada". Long before any of this, the Indigenous Arawak called the island Camajuya.

• 3. Fort Royal And The Caribs

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  In 1649, a French expedition of 203 men from Martinique, led by Jacques Dyel du Parquet, founded a permanent settlement. They signed a peace treaty with the Carib chief Kairouane, but within months conflict broke out between the two communities. The fighting lasted until 1654, when the French completely subjugated the island. An earlier English settlement attempt in 1609 had ended when the native Carib peoples massacred and drove the settlers away. The French named their colony La Grenade and built a capital they called Fort Royal, later renamed St. George's. The harbour mattered as much as the land. To shelter from hurricanes, the French navy often took refuge there, because no nearby French island had a natural harbour to compare with it. The economy turned on sugar cane and indigo, worked by enslaved Africans brought through the transatlantic slave trade. During the French colonial period, the enslaved population rose from about 222 in 1669 to roughly 15,200 by 1763. Chocolate arrived in 1714 with the introduction of cocoa beans. The British captured Grenada in the Seven Years' War in 1762, and the harbour passed to a new flag.

• 4. Chains And Cargo

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  Between 1669 and 1808, according to the Voyages database, approximately 127,600 enslaved Africans were brought to Grenada by the British and French. On the 10th of February 1763, Grenada was ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Paris. France briefly recaptured it after Comte d'Estaing won the bloody land and naval Battle of Grenada in July 1779, but the Treaty of Versailles restored it to Britain in 1783. A pro-French revolt led by Julien Fédon broke out in 1795-96 and was defeated by the British. As the economy grew, the human cargo grew with it. In 1785, Grenada held 23,926 enslaved Africans, 1,115 free people of colour, and around 996 European settlers. By 1807, Britain had brought 114,000 slaves to the island, according to the Voyages Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Britain outlawed the slave trade across its empire in 1807, having transported roughly 3.1 million Africans between 1640 and 1807, with about 2.7 million surviving the Middle Passage. Slavery itself was outlawed in 1833, and all enslaved Africans were emancipated by 1838. To ease the labour shortage that followed, migrants from India were brought to Grenada beginning in 1857. A different cargo would soon define the island's future: in 1843, a merchant ship bound for England from the East Indies left a small quantity of nutmeg trees in Grenada.

• 5. From Sky Red To Suffrage

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  In 1877, Grenada was made a Crown colony, and the long fight for a political voice began. Theophilus A. Marryshow founded the Representative Government Association in 1918 to push for a more participative constitution. His lobbying led the Wood Commission of 1921-22 to conclude that Grenada was ready for reform. The result granted Grenadians the right to elect five of the 15 Legislative Council members, but on a property franchise so narrow that only the wealthiest 4% of adults could vote. Marryshow was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1943. In 1950, Eric Gairy founded the Grenada United Labour Party, first as a trade union, and led the 1951 general strike for better working conditions. So many buildings were set ablaze that the unrest became known as the "sky red" days. On the 10th of October 1951, Grenada held its first general elections under universal adult suffrage, and Gairy's party won six of the eight contested seats. From 1958 to 1962 Grenada belonged to the Federation of the West Indies. After it collapsed, Grenada became an Associated State with full control of internal affairs on the 3rd of March 1967, the first step toward standing on its own.

• 6. Revolution And Firing Squad

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  Independence came on the 7th of February 1974, under Eric Gairy, who became the first prime minister of a sovereign Grenada. The country stayed in the Commonwealth with Queen Elizabeth as monarch, represented by a governor-general. Trouble followed quickly. After the 1976 election, the opposition rejected the result, citing fraud and intimidation by the "Mongoose Gang", a private militia loyal to Gairy. On the 13th of March 1979, while Gairy was abroad, the Marxist New JEWEL Movement launched a bloodless coup, suspended the constitution, and set up a People's Revolutionary Government headed by Maurice Bishop. Bishop's government built close ties with Cuba, Nicaragua, and other communist bloc countries, banned all parties except the NJM, and held no elections in four years. By mid-1983, Bishop clashed with hardliners who thought him insufficiently revolutionary. On the 16th of October 1983, Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard and his wife Phyllis Coard, backed by the army, placed Bishop under house arrest. Impassioned supporters freed him and marched to the island's military headquarters. Soldiers in armoured vehicles retook the fort, and gunfire killed three soldiers and at least eight civilians. Bishop surrendered and was executed by firing squad with seven of his closest supporters, among them three cabinet ministers and a trade union leader.

• 7. Operation Urgent Fury

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  President Ronald Reagan pointed to Cuban construction workers and military personnel building a 10,000-foot airstrip as particularly worrying. Bishop said the runway would let commercial jets land, but some US analysts argued only heavy military transport planes justified a runway so long and reinforced. The contractors, the American and European companies involved, and the EEC, which provided partial funding, all denied any military capability. Reagan claimed the Soviet Union would use Grenada to refuel Cuban and Soviet planes carrying weapons to Central American insurgents. After Bishop's execution, the People's Revolutionary Army formed a military government under General Hudson Austin and declared a four-day total curfew, with anyone leaving home without approval to be shot on sight. The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, Barbados, and Jamaica appealed to the United States. On the 25th of October 1983, combined US and Regional Security System forces invaded in Operation Urgent Fury, acting, the US said, at the request of Barbados, Dominica, and Governor-General Paul Scoon. Within four days they removed Austin's government. Britain, Trinidad and Tobago, and Canada criticised the action. The UN General Assembly condemned it as "a flagrant violation of international law" by a vote of 108 to 9, with 27 abstentions. Eighteen members of the former government were arrested over Bishop's murder; fourteen were sentenced to death, sentences later commuted, and they became known as the "Grenada 17".

• 8. Nutmeg, Storms, And Gold

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  The 7th of September 2004 ended 49 hurricane-free years when Hurricane Ivan struck as a Category 3 storm, killing 39 people and damaging or destroying 90% of the island's homes. The next year, on the 14th of July 2005, Hurricane Emily hit the north as a Category 1 storm with 80-knot winds, killing one person and causing an estimated 110 million US dollars in damage. The nutmeg industry suffered serious losses each time. That industry remains the backbone of the spice trade, with nutmeg the country's top export and the crop shown on the flag. A November 2003 study found most growers are small: 74.2% sell under 500 pounds a year, while only 3.3% sell over 2,500 pounds, accounting for 40% of total output. Tourism is now the mainstay of the economy, drawn to beaches like the three-kilometre Grand Anse Beach in St. George's. On the world stage, Kirani James won Grenada's first Olympic gold in the men's 400 metres at the 2012 Games in London, then took silver in Rio in 2016 and bronze in Tokyo in 2020. At the 2024 Games in France, Anderson Peters and Lindon Victor added bronze medals in the javelin and decathlon. On the 1st of July 2024, Hurricane Beryl struck Carriacou as a Category 4 storm, leaving 95% of customers across the country without power, a reminder that the Island of Spice still rebuilds its trees and its homes after every season.