Ins & Outs of Grenada

HISTORY  25 INS View of Belmont [Estate], 1821 by James Dods, overseer Illustration courtesy Belmont Estate The Carenage, St. George’s, early 1900s Grand Anse Beach, with early latrines, c. 1920s Seaward side of St. George’s taken from Fort George c. 1890 Photo courtesy Grenada National Museum St. Mark, and Duquesne and Mt. Rich, St. Patrick. Although most traces of indigenous peoples and cultures have been overwritten by those who came next, the Grenadian landscape has been enriched by its indigenous past and this needs to be recognised for its continued contributions to our rich heritage. The advent of European invasion in the 16th century and their settlement of Camáhogne (the indigenous name for Grenada) after 1649, resulted in profound changes to the landscape and its indigenous peoples, particularly the displacement and ultimately the destruction of the Kalinago (Caribs) and Kalina inhabitants. In the 500 years since, the islands have gone from sparsely populated indigenous spaces to the modern day where almost every piece of ground is impacted by some form of human activity today. The large scale settlement of the French and then the British and their enslaved (Africans) significantly transformed the Grenadian landscape with dramatic demographic changes and the introduction of numerous exotic flora and fauna. Slave-plantation agriculture supplied international markets with crops like tobacco, indigo, cocoa, coffee and sugar. Provision gardens dotted the mountainsides to feed an ever-growing population, and urban centres and extensive infrastructure emerged to connect the islands’ social and economic activities. For almost two centuries, the Grenadian landscape was overshadowed by the specter of plantation agriculture and slavery, a reality that is unimaginable today. Plantation ruins can be visited at places like Dunfermline, St. Andrew or Belmont, St. Patrick, and offer glimpses of this dark era with a sort of curated decay, telling but an inadequate tale of what really happened across this tortured landscape. The end of slavery in Grenada and across the English-speaking Caribbean in 1834 and Painting of Kalinago pirogues meeting Spanish ships, circa 1614, showing the northern coast of Grenada, most likely Irwin’s Bay, St. Patrick Illustration from Nicholas de Cardona’s Descripciones geográficas e hidrográficas..., 1632 Expansive ruins of the sugar works at the Dunfermline (formerly Simon) sugar estate Inset > Gouyave from the South c. 1890 Photos courtesy Grenada National Trust