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

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Enslavement
• Grenada
• Fedon rebellion
• slave catchers
• nightwatchmen
• West India Regiments

On 24 June 1784, the British West Indian colony of Grenada’s governor, General Edward Mathews, received a letter from two of the colony’s leading planters, Ninian Home and John Castles. Home and Castles had written to ask for clemency on behalf of an enslaved man called Korey, who had just been found guilty of murder. Home was a member of the colony’s Assembly, and both men were justices of the peace involved in the trial, although it is unclear in what capacity. Light on detail, their letter nevertheless laid out the basics.¹

One night, some weeks earlier, Korey, an older, trusted enslaved man who resided on the Observatory plantation on the colony’s eastern shore had been going about his business as the estate’s nightwatchman when he got into an altercation with another enslaved man called Peter. Peter wase enslaved on Ninian Home’s plantation at Belmont not too far from the Observatory. During the fracas Korey overpowered and killed Peter. The next day Korey was arrested and quickly brought before the magistrate. The trial Korey received in the tiny capital, St Georges, that day was a quick one and he was unceremoniously condemned to death.²

Korey however was no ordinary field slave. An older, trusted, nightwatchman he also had a particular talent that made him especially valuable to the plantocracy: a set of skills which would save his life. Korey the watchman was also a slave catcher who by all accounts was one of the most successful in the colony. ‘He formally conducted himself as a faithful slave’ wrote Home and Castles to the governor. ‘He has on many occasions exerted himself at suppressing the runaways’, they continued, ‘and his exertions have been attended with success and benefit to the colony’. ‘If mercy is showed to him’ they argued, ‘ … he may in future be again serviceable’.³ Not resting on this request alone, two further petitions arrived signed by yet more planters saying much the same thing: asking for clemency for Korey who they all agreed was far too valuable a slave to simply execute.⁴ After a brief exchange with London, these petitions were enough for Korey’s reprieve.

This article uses the case of Korey as a lens to investigate the themes of fear, dependency and complicity in the slave society of Grenada at the end of the eighteenth century. The question of complicity in a slave colony remains vexed and contested, but it is the troubling interplay between these three ideas that makes Grenada in this time of ‘Atlantic revolutions’ so provocative. Korey, as both a much-needed nightwatchman and a slave catcher, represents just one aspect of Europeans’ increasing reliance in Grenada and elsewhere on enslaved and free Africans. Planters’ dependency went beyond their own wealth in the form of their praedial labour, as Africans began to be employed in more specialized roles, especially military roles in the colony, which is investigated here. Korey’s story provides an entry point for this article’s exploration of collusion and collaboration in a critical time and place: Grenada, 1784–1796.⁵

A key part of the plantocracy’s increasing dependence on Africans beyond their physical labour in the fields and other plantation roles was General Mathews himself, who initiated significant developments in the way the colony’s civil and military forces responded to needs that were specific to the British held Windward islands colonies such as St Vincent, Dominica and, as explored here, Grenada. All of which for a time in the 1780s he was responsible for. By 1784, Mathews, fresh from North America, had brought with him to Grenada the 300-strong ‘Black Carolina Corps’ to augment the military establishment in the colony.⁶ A short time later, he created more units in Grenada, including the ‘Black Pioneers’, the ‘Dragoons’ and the ‘Loyal Corps of Artificers’. These men worked on government projects in the expanding economy, especially in engineering roles on defensive works or, like Korey, hunting escaped enslaved. Eventually, even more enslaved would be employed across the colony, especially by the military.

The origin of African units or Africans in British martial service goes back at least to the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), if not before. However, the specific circumstances of Grenada during 1784–1796 and smaller Windward Island colonies nearby saw crucial, often subtle, developments in the roles the plantocracy needed to maintain the institution of slavery (and their own profits) and the military needed for defence.⁷ But while there are a number of similarities between smaller colonies among the Windward islands such as St Vincent, Dominica and Grenada such as the topography, work regime and the demographic makeup, Grenada due to its larger size and larger population, especially those who lived there and who were French and those who were mixed race and francophone, stands out as the lynchpin colony for changes in the military structure that affected the other similar colonies. For example, Black units formed in Grenada were sent to Dominica to reinforce the defences, act as pioneers and fight maroons in much the same way as had been modelled first in Grenada.

Recently highlighted by Lennox Honychurch, Dominica did have a considerable number of maroons, the leaders of which were named and known unlike those in Grenada; however, their activity in Dominica was characterized by far more negotiation to that of Grenada. Nor did Dominica undergo a major rebellion like Grenada’s Fedon rebellion. As Tessa Murphy has argued, unlike Grenada, Dominica’s much smaller population had proportionally fewer free francophone people of colour who might have joined forces with the maroons as they did in Grenada. During the 1780s, moreover, Dominica was the site of significant loyalist emigration which bolstered its defences.⁸ There was in fact a lull in maroon activity in the late 1780s in Dominica while commensurate activity was much greater in Grenada.⁹ Another key factor for the focus on Grenada were the circumstances of the Fedon rebellion which gave further impetus to the creation of Black units. The timing of the Fedon conflict in Grenada beginning as it did in 1795 was crucial to the development of auxiliaries. The Fedon conflict in Grenada began after the start of the Brigands war on St Vincent which drew British regulars away from Grenada. This left the colony with fewer regular troops adding to the desperate need for more troops, especially Black troops. The leadership in Grenada was therefore the first to implement a formal, organized structure to Black service across several branches rather than just a levee of enslaved, as with other colonies or as with the French before them. With the unrest of the 1790s, this type of organization became the model for future service elsewhere.

When the Fedon rebellion broke out in the colony in 1795 and Britain found itself short of soldiers, commanders sought the assistance of the same Africans the planters had used to further the colony’s development. Out of desperation, armed enslaved, who were so essential to maintaining the vicious plantation order, were quickly enlisted into regular troops of Black auxiliaries to augment the militia and regular troops. Planters feared these armed units, but despite attractive offers by the rebel leadership, overwhelmingly, these units stayed loyal to the planting/colonial regime during the rebellion, fighting with alacrity and skill.¹⁰ This article explores in depth the incremental changes to African roles in the 15 years from 1784 that led to the dependence on Black units in Grenada during the Fedon rebellion.

This exploration into fear, dependency and complicity in Grenada between 1784 and 1796 adds to recent research into African participation in the British slave trade and the plantation economy more generally. Scholars such as Sylviane Diouf and Keith Mason have recently explored aspects of this complicity in or around enslavement.¹¹ Specifically, the Grenada story has been researched to examine the history of the West Indian Regiments (WIR) – the first formal, permanent units of the British army made up of former enslaved. The WIR were first constituted in Grenada at the end of Fedon’s rebellion in 1796 and based directly on the experience of recruiting the ‘Black Corps’ in the conflict. A. B. Ellis first explored the history of these regiments in the 1880s, followed by Peter Voelz in 1978 and Roger N. Buckley in 1979.¹² More recently, David Lambert, Tim Lockley and Elizabeth Cooper headed an ongoing project investigating these units, particularly their crucial role in policing enslavement and the British West Indies and their history beyond emancipation in 1833.¹³ Scholars including Voelz, Lambert, Lockley, Cooper and, more recently, Humphrey Metzgen, John Graham and Alessandra Bollettino argue that their creation was a desperate measure to fill the ranks and improve the survivability of British forces fighting among the islands in the southern Caribbean specifically. This article concurs with their contention that Grenada and the French republican wars of the 1790s (which included Fedon’s rebellion) gave birth to these Black regiments.¹⁴ Beginning with a reliance on enslaved men like Korey, the government and the planters of Grenada rapidly opened the door to further units that began to augment both the military and the abhorrent planting regime they supported. Fear, dependence and complicity in Grenada, this article contends, were key to this development. This article builds on the scholarship surrounding the WIR by linking those who would later be part of the WIR to embryonic early phases of service in Grenada prior to the regiment’s foundation.

The Context for Korey

By the late eighteenth century, the colony of Grenada was Britain’s third most valuable West Indian slave colony after Jamaica and Barbados.¹⁵ The colony’s position among the Windward Islands of the southern Caribbean also made it a strategic location, nestled uncomfortably close to the French in Martinique and Guadeloupe and the Spanish in Trinidad.¹⁶ It was also a fractious colony with a mixed population: some French, some British and increasing numbers of mixed-race, Francophone, ‘free people of colour’ (to use the language of the time), who by the early 1790s had become the largest group in the free population.¹⁷

The planting regime in Grenada changed markedly after the British took the colony from the French in 1763. It grew harsher and more industrial.¹⁸ Large numbers of enslaved were brought in directly from Africa which changed the regime’s character from the formerly sparsely populated French colony.¹⁹ The proportion of recalcitrant Africans over Creoles was far greater in Grenada than elsewhere because the new arrivals were a greater proportion of the population. For example, new enslaved arrivals in Barbados expanded the population of enslaved from 63,410 in 1750–82,026 by 1830, whereas in Grenada, the proportion of new enslaved in the population was far greater, almost doubling from 12,000 enslaved in 1750–23,884 by 1830.²⁰ Several small rebellions were put down early in the British administration, but fear of revolt remained pronounced.²¹ The threatening, densely forested and mountainous interior and the rebellious workforce kept nervous planters awake and, in their desperation at a lack of white bodies, more willing to countenance African assistance from the much smaller but more known and trustworthy population of Creoles  – men like Korey. Indeed, as Michael Mullin has explored with Jamaica, there could be distinct animosity between the two groups due to this tractability.²² In both the governor’s despatches and the Grenada archives there are a variety of regular requests from planters for extra security, more patrols, more boats to guard the coasts and more African slave catchers.²³

It was the protean nature of the hinterland that made Home, Castles and the others in their petitions so nervous. As argued in the second petition, some groups were not just runaway enslaved: some were more organized, armed and dangerous and prepared to defend their liberty. These ‘gangs’ were not just a thorn in the side of the plantocracy; they were a real danger to the enslavers. Often, groups of Africans would descend from the mountains to the plantations late at night, spiriting away enslaved or stealing equipment or food.²⁴ It was an ongoing issue that occupied a lot of time and greatly added to the insecurity. Korey, and men like him, were vital to planters’ security both externally from the forests and internally on the plantation. In stressing Korey’s effectiveness, the petitions reflect the authors’ desperation to maintain order and profitability on their plantations. The petitions also demonstrate that Korey was given a certain autonomy due to his knowledge of the colony and where enslaved might run to. The petitioners recognized his ‘activity and vigilance’ against those ‘that inhabit the mountains’.²⁵

Similarly, the proximity of other foreign colonies was also a draw for the enslaved of Grenada. The Spanish in Trinidad openly offered freedom to any enslaved person making it to their territory.²⁶ This practice outraged planters in Grenada and exposed a critical weakness in the colony, making it distinct from other colonies such as Jamaica and Barbados. Escaping to the Spanish from Grenada, often at the coaxing of others already there, was easy – just a two-day journey in a small canoe – so men like Korey were employed in numbers to prevent the enslaved from absconding.²⁷ Authorities in Grenada vociferously made complaints to foreign governors, especially the Spanish and the French in Martinique, to retrieve those they had enslaved.²⁸ This close contact and network of influence reinforces the work of Julius Scott about African communications sometimes occurring over great distances.²⁹ Similarly Jason T. Sharples has argued that times of war often heightened this traffic and exacerbated both fear of revolt and fears of flight among the enslaved both of which encouraged enslavers to seek out and employ informants and spies.³⁰

Leonie Archer recently explored the differences in abscondment, distinguishing between an established colony like Barbados, where a temporary ‘petit maroonage’ or a temporary escape dominated and elsewhere, such as the maroon societies that developed in the much larger British colony of Jamaica.³¹ As explored by Gad Heuman, James Walvin, Michael Craton and, more recently, Johnhenry Gonzalez and Alvin Thompson, ‘grand maroonage’ – or a more permanent flight into the hinterland – partly defines the histories of large colonies with an undeveloped interior of mountains and deep forest.³² In French St Domingue and Spanish Cuba, large numbers of maroons lived relatively free in the interior throughout the period of enslavement, as in British Jamaica.³³ However, this dynamic also affected smaller but relatively underdeveloped colonies in the Windward Islands, such as St Vincent, Dominica and, most importantly, Grenada.³⁴ The same pattern emerges albeit on a smaller scale. Yet, what was crucial were the relatively small numbers of Europeans in Grenada, making the need for security as great as a larger colony with many more enslaved.

As men drawn from the older, often Creole population (who knew the colony the best), watchmen and slave catchers were distinct among a sea of new arrivals. Watchmen are rarely listed in the slave registers for the early nineteenth century but where they are they are invariably described as older enslaved.³⁵ Placed in close confines with newer enslaved, some Creole or enslaved of long standing sought ways to differentiate, codify and elevate their positions in the enslaved hierarchy, as explored by Randy M. Browne, Keith Mason and Dorothy Clayton.³⁶ Justin Roberts and Caitlin Rosenthal also explored differences among enslaved employed on a plantation, although the extent to which these older Creole enslaved formed a collective group is unclear.³⁷ Perhaps Peter, the enslaved man Korey killed, was another watchman though the petitions did not go into detail. It was possibly that advantages enjoyed by Korey had brought him into confrontation with Peter, though what the cause of any argument was we can never know. It could be jealousy or even defiance at Korey’s authority or Korey’s open complicity that he may have been challenged in some way by Peter. As Randy M. Browne has observed, nightwatchmen who regarded themselves as above field enslaved often got into arguments over status and hierarchy with other enslaved.³⁸ And like the more senior drivers, they too occupied a distinct place in that hierarchy at once both victim of the slave system but also a key intermediary of power.³⁹

While escaping enslaved or gangs in the woods were a feature of most slave societies, other elements particular to Grenada and to a lesser extent those on St Vincent and Dominica worried British planters. The white population was distinctly divided between Anglo-Scots and French, specifically Catholics and Protestants.⁴⁰ From 1763 to 1779, British arrivals marginalized and disenfranchized the French who had remained in the colony, and the animosity between them became increasingly bitter. The situation worsened when the French briefly reoccupied the colony due to the American War of Independence and remained there for four years (1779–1783).⁴¹ British Governor Mathews’ appointment in Grenada after that war did not sit well with the remaining French, who now had to countenance an even more divisive British administration. Fears over the possibility of a French rebellion or reconquest increased the British need for spies, which was partly why Home and the other planters relied on men like Korey.

A key part of Grenada’s defences was a militia of approximately 1,100 men, active in every parish in the colony, with five separate troops plus units of artillery and cavalry.⁴² However, it was only really attended to by either ‘free people of colour’ from the small British community of mixed-race residents or the white British.⁴³ The French, including the large mixed-race Francophone community, mostly exempted themselves from service under the terms of the treaty of 1783 which ceded the colony once again to the British. Any Frenchman who had served in the French army or for the French army was exempt.⁴⁴ This lack of white French participation lessened the militia’s effectiveness, placing more reliance on men like Korey to assist them. When Fedon’s rebellion broke in 1795, the militia’s performance was poor, especially in comparison to the accumulated number of African levies who largely fought with great effect.⁴⁵

While the French white population was decreasing in the colony, the French free people of colour were a direct and growing threat.⁴⁶ Beginning with Governor Mathews, there were attempts to control disembarkation in the colony, but the steady repetition of edicts over the 1780s indicate that it was ineffectual. By the Fedon rebellion in 1795, there were approximately 3,000 free people of colour, 1,000 French and around 1,500 British whites and British free people of colour.⁴⁷ A crucial component of the British white’s dependency on Africans in the colony was this gross population imbalance – they needed loyal Africans to make up the numbers. Free people of colour dominated the towns and markets places. The women in the community were particularly noticeable: some were distinctly wealthy and successful.⁴⁸ One of the largest plantations in the colony, the Grand Ance estate, was owned by Judith Philip, a French free coloured woman and there were many others.⁴⁹ There was also much miscegenation among French whites and women of colour and increasingly between British and free women of colour.⁵⁰ While mixed-race coupling like this increased anxiety among some whites, efforts to stop it were not successful.⁵¹

Despite cross-racial and cultural relationships, the British distrust of Francophone mixed-race people grew throughout the 1780s, fuelled by the ethnic, religious, and physical divides that pervaded the colony. While the British dominated the capital, St Georges, in the south-west corner of the island and the small village of Grenville in the east, the colony’s other villages, Gouyave and Sueteurs, were Francophone which spatially separated the two sides. This animosity and division allowed Julien Fedon, from 1793 onward, to secretly plan his rebellion against enslavement and British rule and organize a cross section of French free coloureds inspired by the ideology and example of the French Revolution.⁵²

The British had good reason to fear Francophone free people of colour and French whites, although they themselves were largely responsible for allowing bad faith to fester and continuing with Catholic French and mixed-race marginalization. Without the support of French whites and those Francophone and mixed race, the British were forced to be more open about employing Africans in martial roles. From the 1780s, Ninian Home led this ethnic and racial division as the ‘British party’ leader. In the governor’s council, Home fought hard against enfranchising the French and free coloureds and encouraged others to do likewise.⁵³ While he was relatively restrained while Mathews was governor, Home’s influence and voice grew louder after Mathews departed in 1790 and Home became the lieutenant governor in 1793. Ultimately, Home was murdered alongside 44 others in the 1795 rebellion as a hated figure among the French.⁵⁴

Dependency Expands

Security fears grew steadily between 1784 and 1790 and escalated significantly after 1793. While General Mathews was governor, the colony had a sizeable military presence which partly undergirded the British party’s attempts to marginalize the French and free coloureds. Mathews was both regional military chief and the newly appointed governor of the Windward Islands, which included Grenada. Many of the troops in Grenada had arrived with Mathews when he took up his command in 1784; others arrived later. Mathews argued for two full European regiments to be stationed in the colony to improve security and deter foreign attack, which London subsequently granted.⁵⁵ There was relative peace from 1784 to 1791, and the colony’s regular military accompaniment remained static at roughly two regiments (around 1,100 men). British planters voiced their approbation, as the security of the colony was strengthened by this force of regular troops.

A key feature of Grenada was the process by which the colony’s government and military used enslaved labour in such numbers, which included the maintenance of its physical defences and the building of more. This process dramatically swelled the number of enslaved in vital government roles and directly benefited planters by building roads, draining swamps and clearing land.⁵⁶ Some military emplacements that dominated St Georges harbour – such as Fort George – were long-standing and built by the French.⁵⁷ Like the British, the French used corvee labour from among the enslaved but nothing like the scale of the British in the 1780s and early 1790s and they never formally constituted specific roles and corps. Under the British new constructions abounded such as positions north of St Georges on the western coast as well as several forts overlooking the town from the landward side as well as buildings in the east at Grenville and Suateurs in the north.⁵⁸

The new emplacements (like the ones Korey guarded at the Observatory) were designed for regular military use to deter attack from the sea as were those built about the capital and further afield. However, several looked inland and were clearly designed for internal defence. This meant the regular troops contributed to defending the colony from without and safeguarding against internal rebellion from either Francophone Catholics or those enslaved. The policing of enslavement by the regular military, not just the local militia, is an important and distinctive aspect of dependency and insecurity in the colony. Michael Duffy has underscored this dynamic more broadly, and my specific research has similar findings.⁵⁹ Across the late 1780s, the government and planters came to rely on regular soldiers acting as internal police as much they did on Korey and those like him. As Sharples has argued in the Jamaica and Barbadian contexts, ‘these policing institutions enabled white(s) to manage their own fear by threatening violence against Blacks, terrorizing them’. Eighteenth-century planters readily fell into what Sharples has defined as the planter ‘paradigm’ and the ‘bundle of assumptions’ of fears real but very often imagined.⁶⁰

Much of the building work in the colony was done by enslaved employed by the military as ‘pioneers’ or those owned directly by the government as ‘Government slaves’. These workers were quickly augmented by levies from the planters, whereby each plantation was expected to provide a certain number of enslaved workers to labour a certain number of days per month.⁶¹ Planters were supposed to be compensated from government funds, but funds were tight, and the archives reveal complaints from planters seeking redress from the government.⁶² Planters largely recognized the work done by the enslaved as vital for the colony. Later, the number of enslaved labouring for the military or the government would grow even further.

To help construct military installations and augment the militia, the Black Carolina Corps and the regular soldiers in the colony, a more formal ‘Black Corps’ was organized in January 1785 (although the word ‘pioneer’ was used interchangeably).⁶³ It was partly a way to differentiate between the many enslaved who were general levies and those in more specialized roles enslaved by the military or government. Drawn largely from enslaved of long standing (men like Korey), the Black Corps was a military force of enslaved men that also contained significant numbers of skilled enslaved who held specialized roles in construction and land clearance. Like nightwatchmen and, the more senior enslaved in the plantation hierarchy, drivers, the Black Corps were relied on in the colony. Unlike most enslaved, the men in the Black Corps had considerable freedom of movement and were a permanent force. While the European regular soldiers were present, nervous voices among the whites were kept to a minimum. When these European troops were moved elsewhere in 1793–1794, planters’ fears escalated dramatically with concerns over security.

The Black Corps was an idea that Mathews had based upon his experience with African worker/soldiers in the American Revolutionary War. Like the 300-strong Carolina Corps, the Black Corps was a model for future military expansion. They were formally constituted not long after Mathews arrived in the colony. In a January 1785 update to Lord Sydney, Mathews outlined the new corps’ three distinct units. The first and largest group (initially around 500) was known as the pioneers, whose role was building – specifically military construction but also more generally roads, bridges, wharfs and larger constructions such as government buildings and barracks – based on similar battalions in the American War of Independence.⁶⁴ The second unit was ‘dragoons or mounted pioneers’, who mainly captured runaway enslaved in the interior. Initially comprising 289, the number quickly grew.⁶⁵ They worked closely with the similarly armed and accoutred Black Carolina Corps. As Mathews reported, the Black Dragoons had been ‘singularly useful in the dispersion of the runaway negroes, who were numerous and dangerous to the inhabitants of the interior part of this island’. Finally, the third African unit was what Mathews described as ‘a corps of very good artificers’. They were skilled tradesmen – including masons, carpenters and bricklayers – who worked closely with the pioneers and other levies from the general enslaved population with as many as a thousand or more enslaved at any given point spread across several sites.⁶⁶

Mathews’ project was ambitious. His letters to London detailed how the Black Corps should be led and accoutred, and how the white officers temporarily on secondment from the army were paid.⁶⁷ Enthused, Mathews included early plans for the other colonies under his command, St Vincent and Dominica, where Black Corp units were already set up. Modelled on and partly made up of transferred men from Grenada, these units similarly grew in importance in these colonies.⁶⁸ Across the three divisions of the Black Corps in Grenada, there were well over a thousand working at any one time, by far the largest number in the region. This was in addition to the thousand already employed as levies. This all cost money but the men of the colony’s Assembly were only too happy to pay for these extra layers of service as long as the European military numbers remained high, and the colony held the attention of both Mathews as the commander in chief and governor and those in London.⁶⁹

By the end of 1785, the Black Corps’ three divisions were all permanently employed about the colony; however, the mounted dragoons were particularly noteworthy. In a February 1786 letter Lord Sydney wrote a reply to a letter that had been written by William Lucas, the president of the council. In it he made pointed reference to the effectiveness of the dragoons as outlined by Lucas in ‘suppressing the runaway negroes … ’. Sydney acknowledged, with approbation, that the mounted enslaved dragoons were ‘well into executing’ that ‘service’. Over and above the efforts by Mathews to promote the corps, however, Lucas and the councilmen had been clearly worried that the force might be disbanded in spite of their enthusiasm for it. Though the letter is lost, Lucas must have sought assurances from Sydney as the secretary of state who was at pains to point out in the reply that, on the contrary, it was his ‘wish’ that the corps ‘increase rather than diminish’.⁷⁰

In his December 1787 report Williams proudly proclaimed that in addition to those on guard duty, the ‘whole force of Artificers and Pioneers’ had been ‘successfully employed in forwarding Fort Frederick … and for erecting a barracks for two hundred men’, while ‘the white and black seamen’, he further enthused, had ‘exerted themselves’ in carrying up to Richmond Heights (overlooking St Georges) ‘all the heavy artillery and mortars’.⁷¹ Later, when Mathews returned to the colony, he would likewise report to Lord Sydney about their ‘performance’.⁷² The three hundred armed and mounted Carolina Corps of Black loyalists or the Black Dragoons, were likewise spoken about in glowing praises by both Governors and British officers especially in their roles as maroon hunters.

However, there were further dimensions to European and free mixed-race dependence on Africans. Although not formally constituted, the military employed scores of free and enslaved African women as washers, cooks, seamstresses, nurses and sex workers.⁷³ There is also evidence that some free mixed-race women subcontracted female enslaved labour to the military.⁷⁴ Like the Black Corps, the army, government and free population depended on these women across the colony. Servant women – whether enslaved as domestics or free – passed openly about the colony. As groups, the women added to the tensions in Grenada by first, identifying with their masters/enslavers as either British or French and second, because of the lack of control authorities had over their movement.⁷⁵

St Georges was also a large natural harbour, the best in the region, in a strategic area. Under the guns of Fort St George, a whole fleet could ride at anchor, and the harbour was unusually busy. There were many more free and unfree Africans who worked the ships or in the harbour itself, giving the port the feel of ‘an African village’ as one commentator put it.⁷⁶ Adding to the numbers in the port and elsewhere were other enslaved who were enslaved directly by the Grenada government as ‘colony slaves’. Like most slave colonies, the government bought many enslaved Africans directly to work on government projects. They often worked alongside the recruited levies doing very similar work. Alvin O. Thompson conducted a detailed study of the enslaved in Grenada in the early nineteenth century, and argues that as late as 1820, Grenada was particularly reliant on them and their numbers were unusually large.⁷⁷ My research complements these findings and suggests the government was even more reliant on them before the 1795 Fedon rebellion. They numbered around 300 in 1790, although this figure fluctuated.⁷⁸

From 1787 construction grew even more intensive: building forts, roads and emplacements, slowly turning Grenada not only into a ghastly plantation success but also an armed camp. At just one location among many, Richmond Heights, some two hundred and sixty-one government enslaved were registered as working on the fortifications. Among their number were twenty-nine masons, seven carpenters and one hundred and forty-eight ‘labourers’. It was still not enough labour, and the council wrangled over further additions. Eventually, in July 1787, now acting governor William Lucas, Mathews’ temporary replacement, informed London that the Assembly and Council had just passed what he described as ‘ … an Act for appropriating a certain proportion of negro labour to be employed on the fortifications of this island’.⁷⁹ Almost one thousand enslaved were requisitioned as forced levies in this way, adding a third again to the number of enslaved on official projects.

White Concern Mounts

The addition of these units, their critical work in construction and defence, and their increased numbers throughout the late 1780s made some planters in Grenada more cautious. Africans under arms were a particular concern, and they were highly visible. By 1787, 50 of the 100 troops on guard duty around the capital were enslaved Africans with many further employed as batmen and domestics.⁸⁰ Military reliance on Africans only grew. The principal fear was of the free African American dragoons from Carolina who remained in the colony throughout the 1780s and the armed and mounted but still enslaved pioneer dragoons.⁸¹ Thus, there were concerns about the armed African military units and the slippage they represented between enslaved and free. Both units added to confusion and nerves. Clearly, the results for the British military were good, but armed Africans transgressed more delicate racial boundaries in the colony.

The conundrum planters faced was that they needed Africans in large numbers outside the planting regime. There was increasing construction and a densely forested, undulating and difficult hinterland that attracted runaways who often fought back, hence the need for Korey and men like him. Therefore, the colony was exposed to danger internally and external insecurity in the southern Caribbean, Spanish Trinidad in particular.⁸² External threats expanded significantly when the French Revolution spread from Martinique to St Domingue and then to nearby Guadeloupe from late 1789 onward.⁸³ The speaker of the Assembly and the president of the Council repeatedly requested more regular troops, as they feared an over-reliance on armed Africans.

Mathews was not a planter. While the Assembly took comfort from having a governor who was a powerful military officer, they worried that he might not have the same relationship with Africans as they did. After he left the colony in 1790, a series of letters fretted over internal divisions and defences as the white British began to see more and more Africans outside of those kept more securely on plantations.⁸⁴ Slave owners were unsettled by so many Africans in such an array of trusted roles in the racially charged environment of a West Indian colony, and some were deeply concerned by the British military being so dependent on them.⁸⁵ As white companies of regulars were slowly siphoned off to fight elsewhere, they were replaced in the military structure by Africans drawn largely from the dragoons and ‘trusty’ men. These armed enslaved were classed as informal auxiliaries, but their roles were the same. The military was always more enthusiastic for soldiers and simply replaced White troops with Black troops, despite planters’ fears over their exposure.

To allay planters’ fears, the legislature passed a series of racist laws. Much of the impetus for this insecurity was the racial landscape of the colony. Grenada had large numbers of free Africans and mixed-race people in its population, whose numbers were only increasing. The arrival of so many free Blacks and mixed-race people from elsewhere to the colony and the numbers employed by the government and the military were radical changes for a society predicated on enslavement. These new arrivals remade colonial space in Grenada by destabilizing the colony’s power arrangements, hence legislation seeking to curb and control their numbers. In tandem with the law requiring more levies, from 1787 onward, all Black and mixed-race people domiciled or newly arrived in the colony were to be interviewed, registered and given passes.⁸⁶ Later, any mixed-race person in the colony had to prove their free status with certificates or birth records or be re-enslaved. The polyglot nature of Grenadian society in the late 1780s and early 1790s left many under threat. For example, Julien Fedon’s wife was caught up in this wrangle for some weeks before two white testators swore to her free status and she was released.⁸⁷

Such racist legislation was enacted several times by a frightened legislature to try and control people and borders.⁸⁸ The concerns exposed their dependence in ways that were distinct to Grenada. The sheer number of Africans involved in government and military work was staggering given the actual population of the colony which, on the eve of the Fedon rebellion in 1794 was 30,000 enslaved and 5,500 free. The 5,500 free persons included 600 French Whites, 1,500 British whites, 300 in the Black Carolina Corps, the Black seamen and well over 2,500 free mixed-race people who were mostly Francophone. Among the 30,000 enslaved were 1,500 in the Black Corps, several hundred ‘trusty negroes’ that supported the militia, over 2,000 government enslaved and levies, and a few hundred enslaved drivers and watchmen.⁸⁹

By 1793, the complement of regular soldiers the British had come to rely on was reduced even further in a series of troop redeployments to counter the French Revolutionary Wars when they spread further across the Caribbean. Ultimately, this redeployment culminated in the defeat of revolutionary French republicanism among the Windward Islands, but the sudden reduction in regulars left the dependent British planters without internal defence in Grenada. At this time, only two companies of European troops and a small artillery company – no more than 400–500 men, many of whom were ‘sickly’ – remained in the colony.⁹⁰ The departure of so many regular troops, the insecurity this engendered, and the internecine division helped maintain the British momentum towards African units comprised of both freemen and enslaved. In the critical years between 1793 and 1795, planters were forced to acquiesce to the reality of their dependence. They needed Africans for defence and labour, but also fretted over the increase in their numbers. While on paper, the militia amounted to just over 1,000; however, half of those were needed for security on the estates and thus dispersed throughout the colony. The planters were promised more European troops and limited efforts were made to reinforce the colony, but like the ineffectual efforts to control borders and the free people of colour in the colony, it was not nearly enough to allay fears.⁹¹

The Fedon Rebellion

Despite the warning signs, the British were shocked when the Fedon rebellion broke out in March 1795.⁹² From Fedon’s palisaded and fortified encampment built in secret in the mountains, most Francophone mixed-race people were aware of the plan and joined in the struggle as did many enslaved, at least initially.⁹³ The British were quickly caught on the back foot and retreated to St Georges after initial defeats. Only occasionally venturing out, the British in the colony found themselves completely dependent on African units – a dependency that had been growing steadily since 1784. In desperation in July 1795, 400 Africans were armed and accoutred more formally as ‘The Loyal Black Rangers’.⁹⁴ These men were distinct from dragoons of the Black Corps and the now armed ‘pioneers’, slave catchers, sailors and other enslaved in martial service Most were not offered freedom, but they were paid.⁹⁵ On at least four separate occasions during the struggle, the military and the government called on the planters and others in the St Georges environs for yet more ‘trusty’ enslaved to add to these numbers as they clung to their toe hold in St Georges.⁹⁶ Very few French enslaved were involved in this process. Men like Korey became relied upon to defend the colony and put down the rebellion. African units proved effective, loyal and reliable, and hundreds of ‘trusty’ men were drafted from among the enslaved to help turn the tide of rebellion.

Meanwhile, Fedon and those loyal to him ransacked and burned the colony in a highly destructive campaign that destroyed several hundred plantations.⁹⁷ As the conflict developed, Africans occasionally found themselves fighting other Africans: at times, both sides were being defended by Africans, and sometimes organized battle groups were entirely comprised of African soldiers. They fought with skill and determination. Those defending the capital prized the ‘state of the Black Corps’, and White officers spoke with pride of the Africans under their charge and their effectiveness.⁹⁸ Nevertheless, the British did not have the firepower to dislodge Fedon and largely stayed in the capital in a semi-state of siege where they remained for just over a year. In April 1796, European reinforcements commanded by Sir Ralph Abercromby arrived and fought alongside Africans to defeat Fedon and finally end the rebellion.⁹⁹ The bloody campaign took over 7,000 lives, most of them enslaved.¹⁰⁰ Without the Africans’ contribution, the course of the Fedon rebellion would have been markedly different.¹⁰¹

Finishing what Mathew had started, Abercromby perhaps did more than anyone to create a formal Black Corps across the Windward Islands, which became the West India Regiments at the conclusion of the French republican wars. Abercromby was enthused about the African troops’ performance in Grenada, specifically remarking on their ‘deadly execution’ and skill.¹⁰² By the war’s end, well over 2,000 Africans were serving in Grenada in regular military roles, most as rangers and dragoons, and participated in the ensuing campaign across the Windward Islands with clear encouragement from London.¹⁰³ Aside from the regular army, Africans were also formed up into permanent colonial defences. At the end of the struggle in mid-1796 and at Abercromby’s suggestion, the new governor, Alexander Houston, created three new companies to be permanently stationed in the colony which he was already calling the ‘Loyal West India Regiment’.¹⁰⁴ These men partly replaced Mathews’ original ruling of having at least two regiments of European troops. The Fedon rebellion demonstrated the loyalty and effectiveness of African troops in battle in the West Indies, and this seismic shift in practice was uncontested.

What motivated these men to serve the forces of enslavement remains a compelling question, certainly from the standpoint of Grenada. Africans’ dedication was not due to loyalty or devotion, and their clear understanding of the situation was crucial. Enslaved Blacks serving in the Black Rangers must have increasingly recognized that despite the noble goal of Fedon and his compatriots, Fedon was destined for defeat. Being already free and from elsewhere, it is perhaps easier to understand the loyalty of the free Carolina Corps. As Sellick has highlighted, serving the British would bring them advantages immediately and in the future.¹⁰⁵ Following the conflict, the Black Rangers were all manumitted for their service. The Black Corps remained to repair and expand the colonial project. These men served perhaps for pay, conditions or status, but they also fought as conservatives fighting for the existing regime’s order and the world they knew rather than one they did not.

The Fedon rebellion dramatically affected enslavement. From that point on, the British relied on Africans to fight and defend colonies and the institution of slavery. Hinted at during earlier wars such as the Seven Years War or the American Revolution with units such as the ‘Carolina Corps’ and later the ‘Loyal Black Rangers’, conflict in the Windward Islands, of which Fedon’s rebellion played a central part, realized the potential of African fighting power. The formation of a distinct WIR in the aftermath of the Grenada struggle was a direct result. The shift to introducing armed Africans into slave colonies and playing a more forward role in support helped to fracture and break down slavery and its self-fulfilling prophecies by undermining the racial order in the longer term.¹⁰⁶

The story of enslaved nightwatchman Korey, reprieved from the death penalty because of his worth to the plantocracy, has provided a useful starting point to chart the themes of fear, dependency and complicity in a Caribbean slave colony at the end of the eighteenth century. The Fedon rebellion of 1795 firmly bookends the interplay between these ideas. The enslaved were relied upon as nightwatchmen, drivers and slave catchers to keep order; however, largely due to the unique circumstances of Grenada, its location and character, they were gradually drafted as levies and government enslaved. They later became pioneers, rangers, dragoons and artificers, filling the militia ranks and other supporting roles. Armed Africans – some free, some still enslaved – dominated the free spaces of the colony by the end of the rebellion. The timing and unique circumstances of the rebellion and, crucially the build-up to it, saw through a process across the Windward Islands that led directly to the formation of free Africans in their own formal regiments as part of the regular military, the WIR. While Grenada’s essential role has been recognized, marking the specific developments across the 1780s and 1790s in this locale more clearly defines the relationship between planters and their fears, the military, the government and Africans in this moment of genesis.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kit Candlin

Kit Candlin is Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of History, University of Newcastle, University Drive, Callaghan NSW 2308, Australia. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 National Archives of the United Kingdom (NAUK) CO101/25/177, Home and Castles to Mathew, 1784.

2 The dates between the crime being committed and the trial infers speed.

3 NAUK CO101/25/178, Home and Castles to Mathew, 1784.

4 NAUK CO 101/25/201, Planters of St Patricks to Mathews, 1784.

5 The idea and degree of ‘complicity’ among the enslaved in plantation life has been the focus of much study; see for example the recent work by Randy Browne. Randy Browne, ‘The Slave Drivers World’, in Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 72–101. See also the role of informants as highlighted by the work of Jason T. Sharples, The World that Fear Made: Slave Revolts and Conspiracy Scares in the Early American World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), 106. See also the extensive role enslaved informants had in the Denmark Vasey conspiracy in James O’Neil Spady, ‘Power and Confession: On the Credibility of the Earliest Reports on the Denmark Vesey Slave Conspiracy’, The William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (April 2011): 287, 290, 297–300.

6 See for the wider history of this unit the article on the Carolina Corps by Gary Sellick; Gary Sellick, ‘Black Skin Red Coats: The Carolina Corps and Nationalism in the Revolutionary British Caribbean’, Slavery and Abolition 39, no. 3 (07/2018): 459–78.

7 See Bollottino, ‘Of Equal or More Service’, 510–33; See also Trevor Burnard, ‘The Seven Years War in the West Indies’, in The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French St Domingue and British Jamaica, ed. Trevor Burnard and John Garrigus (Pittsburgh: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 82–100.

8 Tessa Murphy, The Creole Archipelago: Race and Borders in the Colonial Caribbean (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2021), 198–9.

9 Lennox Honychurch, In the Forests of Freedom: The Fighting Maroons of Dominica (London: Papilotte Press, 2017), loc 149, loc 1248–1255. Both the First Maroon War in Grenada 1785–1786 and the New Year’s Day revolt of 1791 were far smaller and less destructive than the Fedon rebellion and involved far fewer participants.

10 See for examples of praise for their loyalty Hay, A Narrative, 162; MacMahon, A Narrative, 105.

11 See the tortured relationship between maroons and enslavement in the north American Context: Sylviane A. Diouf, Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons (New York: New York University Press, 2014) and in the Caribbean see Alan Singer see also Emmanuelle Saboro for an inciteful discussion on Indigenous complicity with enslavement, Emmanuelle Saboro, Chapter four, ‘Sins of our Fathers’: Rereading Indigenous Complicity Narratives in Wounds of Our Past: Remembering Captivity, Enslavement and Resistance in African Oral Narratives (New York: Brill, 2022); Keith Mason, ‘The Absentee Planter and the Key Slave: Privilege, Patriarchalism and Exploitation in the Early Eighteenth Century Caribbean’, The William and Mary Quarterly 70, no. 1 (January 2013): 79–102; See also Trevor Burnard, Planters, Merchants and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British America, 1650–1820 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 59–67.

12 A. B. Ellis, A History of the First West India Regiment (London: Chapman and Hall, 1885); Terry Lacey also explored a similar dependence in Jamaica at this time (1977); Peter Voelz, The Military Impact of Blacks in the colonial Americas Vol. 2 (University of Michigan, 1978); Roger N. Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats: The British West Indian Regiments 1795–1815 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979).

13 David Lambert, Tim Lockyear, Elizabeth Cooper, ‘Africa’s Sons Under Arms: Military Bodies and the British West Indian Regiments in the Atlantic World 1795–1914’ (ASUA) Project, University of Warwick, 2022.

14 Humphrey Metzgen, John Graham, Caribbean Wars Untold: A Salute to the British West Indian Regiments (Mona: University of West Indies Press, 2007); Alessandra Bollottino, ‘Of Equal or More Service: Black soldiers and the British Empire in the Middle of the Eighteenth-Century Caribbean’, Slavery and Abolition 38 (2017): 510–33.

15 David Richardson, ‘The British Empire and the Atlantic Slave trade 1660–1807’, in The Oxford History of the British Empire Vol II: The Eighteenth Century, ed. P.J. Marshall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006ed).

16 Kit Candlin, The Last Caribbean Frontier 1795–1815 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Introduction xvi-xxvi.

17 There are three existing histories of Grenada that outline this aspect; see Raymund Devas, The History of the Island of Grenada 1650–1950 (St Georges: Justin james Field, 1964); George Brizan, Grenada: Island of Conflict (Totowa: Zed Books, 1983); Beverley Steele, A History of Grenada and its People (St Georges: Macmillan Caribbean, 2003).

18 See further Burnard and Garrigus, The Plantation Machine, Chapter Seven, ‘The Golden Age of the Plantocracy’ (164–191); Mark Quintanilla, ‘The World of Alexander Campbell: An Eighteenth-Century Grenadian Planter’, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 35, no. 2 (Summer, 2003): 229–56.

19 Quintanilla, ‘The World of Alexander Campbell’, 229–35; Tessa Murphy, ‘A Reassertion of Rights: Fedon’s Rebellion, Grenada, 1795–96’, La Révolution Française, 14. http://journals.openedition.org/lrf/20172018

20 Stanley L. Engerman and B. W. Higman, ‘The Demographic Structure of Caribbean Slave Societies in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, in General History of the Caribbean Vol. 3, ed. Franklin W. Knight (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 45–60. See also Brizan, Grenada, 93; NAUK CO 101/28 no 123, State of Grenada 1763; NAUK CO 101/18 Part II no 81, State of Grenada 1772.

21 Brizan, Grenada Island of Conflict, 35–8; Devas, A History, 74.

22 Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean 1736–1831 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 183–4.

23 NAUK CO 101/26/92 Edward Mathew to Lord Sydney 1784; NAUK CO 101/26/92 Lucas to Sydney, 1785; NAUK CO 101/30/223, Lucas to Grenville,1790, NAG (National Archives of Grenada), J3, 112–8, Planters of St Andrew to Mathews, 1785.

24 NAUK CO 101/30/223, Mathews to Grenville,1790.

25 NAUK CO 101/25/201, Planters of St Patricks to Mathew, 1784.

26 NAUK CO 101/29/ 240, Grenville to Mathew, 1790.

27 NAUK CO 101/25/30 Memorial of John Reid, 1784.

28 NAUK CO101/11/204-208, Middleton, Colby, Bartlett, Melville, Robertson to Melville,1765.

29 See Julius S. Scott, The Common Wind: Afro American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution (New York: Verso, 2018).

30 Sharples, The World that Fear Made, 87.

31 Amy Johnson, ‘Gradations of Freedom: The Maroons of Jamaica 1798–1821’, The Journal of Caribbean history 49, no. 2 (2015): 160–89; Alvin O. Thompson, Flight to Freedom African Runaways and Maroons in the Americas (Mona: University of the West Indies Press, 2006), 53–91. See also Hilary Beckles, ‘From Land to Sea: Runaway Barbados Slaves and Servants 1630–1700’, Slavery and Abolition 6, no. 3 (12/1985); Jerome S. Handler argues however that grand marronage was still possible even quite late in the eighteenth century, see Handler, ‘Escaping Slavery in Caribbean Plantation Society: Marronage in Barbados 1650s-1830s’, New West Indian Guide Nieuwe West-Indiche Gids 71, no. 3/4 (1997): 183–225; Ferderick H. Smith, and Hayden F. Bassett. ‘The Role of Caves and Gullies in Escape, Mobility and the Creation of Community Networks among Enslaved Peoples of Barbados’, in Archaeologies of Slavery and Freedom in the Caribbean: Exploring the Spaces in Between, eds. Lynsey A. Bates, John M. Chenoweth, and James A. Delle (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016), 31–48. See also Kevin Dawson, ‘A Sea of Caribbean Islands: Maritime Maroons in the Greater Caribbean’, Slavery and Abolition 42, no. 3 (2021).

32 Gad Heuman, Out of the House of Bondage: Runaways, Resistance and Marronage in Africa and the New World (London: Cass, 1986); Gad Heuman and James Walvin, eds., The Slavery Reader, (London: Routledge, 2003); Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (New York: Cornell University Press, 1982); Johnhenry Gonzalez, Maroon Nation: A History of Revolutionary Haiti (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019) Chapter Six 199–250.

33 Charlton W. Yingling, ‘The Maroons of Santo Domingo in the Age of Revolutions: Adaptation and Evasion, 1783–1800’, History Workshop Journal no. 79 (Spring, 2015): 25–51; Aviva Chomsky, Pamala Smorkaloff, Barry Carr, eds., The Cuba Reader: History Politics Culture (Ann Arbor: Duke University Press, 2003) Chapter Two, Fleeing Slavery, 64–7.

34 Brooke N. Newman, ‘Identity Articulated: British Settlers, Black Caribs, and the Politics of Indigeneity on St. Vincent, 1763–1797’, in Native Diasporas: Indigenous Identities and Settler Colonialism in the Americas, eds. Brooke N. Newman and Gregory D. Smithers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 109–50; Bernard A. Marshall, ‘Maronnage in Slave Plantation Societies: A Case Study Of Dominica, 1785–1815’, Caribbean Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2008); Polly Pattullo, Your Time Is Done Now: Slavery, Resistance, and Defeat: The Maroon Trials of Dominica 1813–1814 (New York: New York University Press, 2015).

35 Watchmen are rarely listed in the slave returns for Grenada (from 1817) but Demerara from 1817 onwards does provide details that are comparable to Grenada. See for example NAUK T-71 402, Demerara slave returns, return for the Concorde Estate 1819, 905, ‘Alexander Paul’ aged 40 and ‘Grenge Brunie’ aged 36; T-71 404, return for the Wales Plantation, 2717, ‘Yaw’ is listed as being 56; Slaves belonging to Mary Ashby, ‘Earnest’ aged 44 2836 ; T-71 404, Demerara slave returns, Plantation Success, ‘Chance’ is listed as being 48, ‘Maxwell’ aged 53, ‘Nero’ aged 68’, Vincent’ aged 48; ‘Porcupine’ aged 53; NAUK T 71 412 Demerara slave returns, return for the Success plantation, ‘Drury’ aged 36. In the Demerara slave returns there are no watchmen listed that are under the age of 35.

36 Keith Mason, and Dorothy. J. Clayton, ‘The World an Absentee Planter and His Slaves Made: Sir William Stapleton and His Nevis Sugar Estate, 1722–1740’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester 75, no. 1 (1993): 103–31.

37 Justin Roberts, ‘The Better Sort and the Poorer Sort: Wealth Inequalities, Family formation and the Economy of Energy on Caribbean Sugar Plantations 1750 -1800’, Slavery and Abolition 35, no. 3 (2014): 458–73; See also Caitlin Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018), 22–4.

38 Browne, Surviving Slavery, 112–6.

39 Browne, Surviving Slavery, 73–6.

40 See Jessica L. Harland-Jacobs, ‘Incorporating the King’s New Subjects: Accommodation and Anti-Catholicism in the British Empire, 1763–1815’, Journal of Religious History 39, no. 2 (June 2015); Aaron Willis, ‘The Standing of New Subjects: Grenada and the Protestant Constitution after the Treaty of Paris (1763)’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 42, no. 1 (2014): 1–21. And Tessa Murphy, ‘A Reassertion of Rights: Fedon’s Rebellion, Grenada, 1795–96’, La Révolution française. Cahiers de l’Institut d’histoire de la Révolution française 14 (2018): 21–44; and see Jacobs for the connections of this friction to Fedon’s rebellion see Curtis Jacobs, ‘Revolutionary Priest: Pascal Mardel of Grenada’, The Catholic Historical Review 101, no. 2 (2015): 317–41; see also NAUK CO 101/27/76-188, Grenada Proposed Bill: An Act for Regulating Elections, 1787.

41 Devas, A History, 85–115; Brizan, Grenada Island of Conflict, 43–7.

42 See for example NAUK CO 101/33/49, General Return of the Militia, March 1793.

43 For complaints at lack of attendance see NAUK CO 101/33/170-1, Ninian Home to Portland 7/4/1794.

44 NAUK CO 101/28/33-37 Williams to Grenville, 1787; NAUK CO 101/33/171, Ninian Home to Portland 7/4/1794.

45 Of the chroniclers of the rebellion all six of them speak with praise of African units. Turnbbull and the anonymous ‘Grenadian Planter’ had clashing recollections of the militia. Turnbull as a member of the militia tried to justify what amounted to cowardice at key moments and refuted ‘A Grenadian Planter’. Similarly Henry Thornhill had little to say on the militia. The others less praising of their performance.

46 See for example this common theme 1783–1795, NAUK CO 101/32/271 Williams to Dundas 1792.

47 For growth see NAUK CO 101/28 no 123, State of Grenada 1763.NAUK CO 101/18 Part II no 81, State of Grenada 1772. Brizan, Grenada, 93.

48 Church of the Latter-Day Saints Archive (CLS) mf 1523656, item 2, folio 101, Grenada Church Records, Burial of Edward Isles, October 14, 1792; Candlin and Pybus, Enterprising Women, 103–26.

49 The details of her wealth can be found at SRG May 26, 1789 Judith Philip to Michel Philip Release, unnumbered box, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Deeds; See also Walter Fenner, A New and Accurate Map of the Island of Cariacou in the West Indies 1784 (London,1784). See also NAUK C.O. 101/16 and 101/18 pt.3, S.V. Morse, Description of the Grenadines 1778. See also See Candlin and Pybus, Enterprising Women, 57–80; Edmund Thornton appears in a number of places such as Demerara where he had extensive business dealings managed by his son with Judith Philip, William Wheeler, see ‘The return of Edmund Thornton and the Lady Saltoun’, 85–96, NAUK T-71/391, Demerara Slave Registers (plantation), 1817; See also H. Gordon Slade, ‘Craigston and Meldrum Estates 1769–1841’ in Pro c Soc Antiq (The Society of Antiquarians Scotland, 1984), 481–537.

50 While no birth records are extant there are several transactions which involve the children especially later in life such as SRG Deeds W-C3 ‘The Children of Edmund Thornton and Judith Philip to their Attorneys’, 4/9/1855, 289–92; see also UK Articles of Clerkship 1756–1874, ‘Philip Thornton to Stacey Grimaldi witnessed by Edmund Thornton’ 15/2/1816.

51 Daniel Livesay, ‘The Decline of Jamaica’s Interracial Households and the Fall of the Planter Class 1733–1823’, Atlantic Studies (Abingdon, England) 9, no. 1 (2012): 107–23.

52 See the wider literature Michael Duffy, Soldiers, Sugar and Seapower; Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Overture and the San Domingo Revolution, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1963); Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (New York : Cornell University Press, 1982); David Barry Gaspar and David Patrick Geggus, eds., A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Geggus, ed., The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001).

53 For example, see NAUK CO 101/33/63-4, Home to Dundas, 1793.

54 Hay, A Narrative, 77. See also Mark Quintanilla, ‘The World of Alexander Campbell: An Eighteenth-Century Grenadian Planter’, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 35, no. 2 (Summer, 2003): 229–56; NRS GD267/5 1750–1865: Papers relating to West Indies plantations (Waltham, Grenada), including lists of negroes, correspondence and accounts, 1750–1865, and formal deeds appointing Ninian Home as Lt Governor in Grenada, 1784–1793; see also State Records of Grenada (SRG), H.1 (Home) unmarked folio 1784–1790; Relatives warned him of overwork (and his enslaved) see NRS, GD 267/3/62, George Home to Ninian Home, 1793.

55 A Grenada Planter, A Brief Inquiry, 10–12; see also Devas, A History, 129; NAUK CO 101/25-27, Military Returns 1784–1789.

56 See for example Minutes of the Grenada Assembly February 8th in NAUK CO 101/26/310-11, Report of Harry Gordon 1786; NAUK CO 101/26/326, Report on the Colony Negroes and the Works at Richmond Heights, 1786; Minutes of the Grenada Assembly, January 23rd in NAUK CO 101/29/ 89–91, 1788.

57 Pere Labat, Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de l’Amerique vols I-VI (Paris: Guillaume Cevelier, 1722), 113.

58 NAUK CO 101/27/115-6, Lucas to Sydney, 1787.

59 Michael Duffy, Soldiers Sugar and Seapower: The British Expeditions to the West Indies and the War Against Revolutionary France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 59–89.

60 Sharples, The World that Fear Made, 62–3.

61 NAUK CO 101/28/20-25, Williams to Sydney, 24/December 1787.

62 See for example NAUK CO 101/29/92, Minutes of the Grenada Council,1788; The council by law, had to limit the conscription of enslaved at half a plantation’s workforce.

63 NAUK CO 101/26/92-94, Mathews to Sydney, 17th January 1785.

64 See Sellick, ‘Black Skin Red Coats, 459–78; See also Alan. Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

65 NAUK CO 101/28, Return of the Black Corps- Dragoons, 1788.

66 NAUK CO 101/32/67, Return of the Corps of Black Artificers, 1791.

67 NAUK CO 101/26/93, Mathews to Grenville, 17th January 1785.

68 See Sellick, ‘Black Skin Red Coats’, 459–78; Bernard Marshall, ‘The Black Caribs – Native Resistance to British Penetration into the Windward Side of St. Vincent 1763–1773’, Caribbean Quarterly 19, no. 4 (1973): 4–19. Nicholas Rogers, ‘The Carbet and the Plantation: The Black Caribs of Saint Vincent’, in Blood Waters: War, Disease and Race in the Eighteenth-Century British Caribbean, (New York: Boydell & Brewer, 2021), 166–90; Bernard A. Marshall, ‘Maronnage in Slave Plantation Societies: A Case Study Of Dominica, 1785–1815’, Caribbean Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2008): 103–10; Polly Pattullo, ed. Your Time Is Done Now: Slavery, Resistance, and Defeat: The Maroon Trials of Dominica (1813–1814) (New York: NYU Press, 2015).

69 NAUK CO 101/26/92-4, Mathews to Sydney, 1785.

70 NAUK CO 101/26/229, Sydney to Lucas, 1786.

71 NAUK CO 101/28/20-24, Williams to Lord Sydney, December 1787.

72 NAUK CO 101/28/58-59, Mathew to Lord Sydney, 1788.

73 Candlin Kit and Cassandra Pybus, ‘Enterprising Women and War Profiteers in the Revolutionary Caribbean’, in War, Demobilization and Memory (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 254–68.

74 Candlin and Pybus, Enterprising Women, 103–26; Hackers 1985 argument is still cogent and thought provoking on the sexual and labour division of armies in the West Indies; see B. C. Hacker, ‘Where Have all the Women Gone? The Pre-Twentieth Century Sexual Division of Labor in Armies’, Minerva Iii, no. 1 (1985): 107.

75 Hay, A Narrative, 47, 52; MacMahon, A Narrative, 18; See also Nicole Phillip, Producers Reproducers and Rebels: Grenadian Slave Women 1783–1833 (Mona: University of the West Indies Press, Conference Papers, 2002). See also Candlin and Pybus, Enterprising Women, Chapter Six, ‘By Habit and Repute: The Intimate Frontier of Empire’, 126–50.

76 Thornhill, A Narrative, 4.

77 See the work of Alvin Thompson in Alvin O. Thompson, Unprofitable Servants: Crown Slaves in Berbice, Guyana, 1803–1831 (Mona: University of West Indies Press, 2002).

78 NAG P-27/118, Return of Colony Slaves Grenada, 1789.

79 NAUK CO 101/27/115-6, Lucas to Sydney, 1787.

80 NAUK CO 101/33/61-63, Mathews to Grenville, 1790; See also NAUK CO 101/31/80-1, Mathews to Grenville, 1790.

81 NAUK CO 101/33/32-3, Home to Dundas, 1793.

82 Beginning in 1784 with the Memorial of John Reid, Trinidad and Margarita emerge as significant draws for escaping enslaved; Reid repeatedly mentions this issue in his letter. See NAUK CO 101/25, Memorial of John Reid, dated 1784. By 1788 the influence of Trinidad and elsewhere in the Spanish empire in coaxing enslaved to escape to Spanish territory was a problem and a major concern for officials and planters; see NAUK CO 101/28/, 244, Mathews to Sydney, 1788.

83 David Gaspar and David Geggus, A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution in the Greater Caribbean (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997).

84 NAUK CO 101/33/9, Williams to Dundas, 1792.

85 NAUK CO 101/33/40-1 Williams to Home, 1793.

86 NAUK CO 101/27/75-76, William Lucas to Lord Sydney, 1787.

87 NAUK CO 101/27/75, An Act to Register Free Coloureds and Foreigners, 7/4/1787; NAG (National Archives of Grenada), The Registry, Grenada Supreme Court ‘W1’ 1787, Deed Book, 166–7.

88 See for example NAUK CO 101/32/271, Williams to Dundas, 1792; NAUK CO 101/33/19-28, Home to Dundas 1793; This continued post rebellion under Governor Green see NAUK, CO 101/35/42-4, Charles Green to Portland, 1797.

89 NAUK CO 101/32-4, Governor’s Correspondence, 1793 1794.

90 See NAUK CO 101/33/109-111, Home to Dundas, 1793; See also NAUK CO 101/33/117, Home to Dundas, 1793; NAUK CO 101/33/145, Home to Dundas, 1794.

91 NAUK CO 101/28/57-58, Edward Mathews to Lord Sydney, 1788.

92 See the dramatic opening correspondence and the subsequent capture of the Lieutenant Governor Home and party, NAUK CO 101/34/145, MacKenzie to Lord Portland, 1795.

93 Hay, A Narrative, 26–33.

94 NAUK CO 101/34/114-6, Mackenzie to Portland, 1795; NAUK CO 101/34/146-8, Mackenzie to Portland, September 1795.

95 NAUK, CO 101/34/257, Statement of Public Expenditures from the Commencement of the Insurrection, March 1795 to June 1796, 1796.

96 See for example Turnbull’s letter to Col. Horsford in Turnbull, A Narrative, 56.

97 Turnbull, A Narrative, 58; A Grenada Planter, A Brief Enquiry, 42.

98 Hay, A Narrative, 46–8; Hay, A Narrative, 166; A Grenada Planter, A Brief Enquiry, 125,145; Turnbull, A Narrative, 56, 114, 121–4; NAUK CO 101/34/197-199, Acting President Samuel Mitchell to Portland, March 1796.

99 MacMahon, A Narrative, 103; Thornhill, A Narrative, 47.

100 Gordon Turnbull, A Narrative of the Revolt and Insurrection of the French Inhabitants in the Island of Grenada,(Edinburgh: Arch. Constable,1795), Appendix, 163; D.G Garraway A Short Account of the Insurrection of 1795/6, (St Georges, Chas Well, 1877), 80; see also NAUK CO 101/35/314, The St Georges Chronicle and Grenada Gazette July 30, 1796; NAUK 101/35 Green to Portland, 4 December, 1798 in Brizan, Grenada: Island of Conflict, 76.

101 The course of the war is recorded by several British eyewitnesses who wrote reflections and histories of the conflict; see: A Grenada Planter, A Brief Enquiry into the Causes and Conduct pursued by the Colonial Government For Quelling the Insurrection in Grenada (London: R. Faulder, 1823); John Hay, A Narrative of the Insurrection in the Island of Grenada Which Took Place in 1795 (London: J. Ridgway, 1823); Francis MacMahon, A Narrative of the Insurrection in the Island of Grenada in the Year 1795 (Grenada: John Spahn, 1823); Turnbull, A Narrative; Thomas Turner Wise, A Review of Events, which have Happened in Grenada, From the Commencement of the Insurrection to the 1st May by a Sincere Well-wisher to the Colony (St Georges: Wise, 1795); Henry Thornhill, A Narrative of the Insurrection and Rebellion in the Island of Grenada From the Commencement to the Conclusion Introduced with a Discourse on the Excellence of the British Constitution (Barbados: Gilbert Ripnel, 1798).

102 See George Pinckard, Notes on the West Indies During an Expedition under Sir Ralph Abercromby, 3 vols. (London: Longman Hurst Rees and Orme, 1806).

103 See for examples of this encouragement NAUK CO 101/31/86-89, Grenville to Mathews, 1791; NAUK CO 101/34/20, Lord Portland to Mackenzie, 1795’ NAUK CO 101/34/111-113, Lord Portland to Mackenzie, 1795.

104 See also NAUK CO 101/34 unnumbered pages, Return of the State of the Militia, Grenada, August 1795.

105 Sellick, ‘Black Skin Red Coats’, 459–78.

106 See K. J. Kesselring, ‘Negroes of the Crown’: The Management of Slaves Forfeited by Grenadian Rebels, 1796–1831’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada 22, no. 2 (2011): 1–29.