A Reassertion of Rights: Fedon’s Rebellion, Grenada, 1795-96

Abstract

This article examines how the experience of being ruled by different Crowns shaped expectations for inclusion among francophone Catholic planters who became subjects of the British Empire after the Seven Years’ War. Attention to the evolving political economy of Grenada in the latter half of the eighteenth century reveals that this small Caribbean island was the site of significant debates over political, economic, and religious participation. Residents of Grenada underwent a number of changes in status, first as marginal subjects of the French Crown and, after 1763, as the focus of British experiments in ruling an increasingly diverse empire. Throughout these imperial transitions, francophone Catholic planters in the island relied on diplomacy to transform customary rights into formal political privileges. In the wake of the American War of Independence, these privileges were denied to them for the first time. Adopting a longer duree view of Grenada’s colonial history challenges the notion that Fedon’s Rebellion was an outgrowth of the French or Haitian Revolutions; instead, the failure to reassert rights through familiar diplomatic strategies prompted white and free coloured Francophone Catholics in the island to turn to violence in 1795.