Fear, Dependency and Complicity in Late Eighteenth-Century Grenada, 1784–1796

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article uses an unusual case of murder in the British, formally French, colony of Grenada in 1784 as a useful window to explore the themes of fear and dependency among planters, and complicity among enslaved and free Africans in a Caribbean slave colony at the end of the eighteenth century. The story of Korey, the enslaved nightwatchman, reprieved from the death penalty because of his worth to the plantocracy, highlights a process in the developing colony that saw large numbers of Africans in the colony employed outside of the planting regime throughout the 1780s and 1790s. By the end of the Fedon rebellion in 1795, armed Africans, some free some still enslaved, dominated the free spaces of the colony. The timing and unique circumstances of the rebellion and crucially the build up to it saw through a process in the colony that directly led to the formation of the West Indian Regiments. Grenada’s essential role in this process has been recognized but by marking the specific developments across the 1780s and 90s, we can see with more definition the interplay between planters and their fears, the military, the government, and Africans in this moment of genesis.