Fédon's rebellion (also known as the Brigands' War, or Fédon's Revolution; 2 March 1795 – 19 June 1796) was an uprising against British rule in Grenada. Although a significant number of slaves were involved, they fought on both sides (the majority being on the side of Fédon and his forces). Predominantly led by free mixed-race French-speakers, the stated purpose was to create a black republic as had already occurred in neighbouring Haiti rather than to free slaves, so it is not properly called a slave rebellion, although freedom of the slaves would have been a consequence of its success. Under the leadership of Julien Fédon, owner of a plantation in the mountainous interior of the island, and encouraged by French Revolutionary leaders on Guadeloupe, the rebels seized control of most of the island (St. George's, the capital, was never taken), but were eventually defeated by a military expedition led by General Ralph Abercromby.
Planning for the rebellion began in March 1793, when Fédon started converting his Belvidere coffee and cocoa plantation into a fortified headquarters and planting crops for his army. In early June 1795, two of his colleagues travelled to neighbouring Guadeloupe, then under the control of French revolutionary commissioners to receive arms, training and commissions, one of which made Fédon General-in-chief of the Grenadian rebel army. On the night of 2 March, this force simultaneously attacked Gouyave and Grenville; the former was relatively peaceful, but in the latter the white population was killed. Many hostages were taken. The British made a number of unsuccessful attempts at assaulting Belvidere; the estate was near the top of a very steep mountain, and almost inaccessible. After the failure of one such attack, Fédon ordered the deaths of around 40 white hostages.
For their part, the rebel army waged a campaign of looting, pillage and arson on the island's plantations, while skirmishing with the British. Both sides attempted to capture and recapture headlands and outposts with varying degrees of success. As the Royal Navy maintained an increasingly effective blockade of the island, Fédon's army was increasingly isolated and suffering from lack of reinforcements and military supplies. His force also paid the price for destroying so many crops the year before, as now a food shortage began. The British, on the other hand, received a number of large augmentations to their strength until, in June 1796, they launched another, successful assault on Belvidere. Fédon's army was routed, and his fate remains a mystery; it was assumed that he drowned trying to escape to Trinidad, but there were also reported sightings of him into the next century. As a result of Fédon's rebellion, French influence in Grenada was eradicated once and for all. Many rebels were executed, some, especially the slaves, without trial. The island's economy was devastated; whereas it had been an economic powerhouse before the rebellion, plantations and distilleries had been destroyed, causing around £2,500,000 of damage.
Although there was a dearth in scholarship regarding the rebellion until the 1960s—particularly in comparison to that of Haiti, for example—since then it has been the focus of increased study, particularly regarding the extent to which it was either a slave rebellion or part of the broader French Revolution. Fédon himself has remained an important figure in Grenadian political culture, and his rebellion is considered to have influenced not only the emancipation of slaves in the Caribbean of the next century, but a revolutionary tradition that came to a head in 1979 with the Grenadian Revolution under Maurice Bishop. Fédon is now seen as important not only for leading the rebellion but also as being at the intersection of a multiplicity of historiographical thought, such as race, revolution, Empire and slavery. Fédon's rebellion has also been the subject of a resurgence of interest in popular culture, having been the subject of a number of plays and poems, and being central to Grenada's tourist industry.
Fédon's rebellion (also known as the Brigands' War, or Fédon's Revolution; 2 March 1795 – 19 June 1796) was an uprising against British rule in Grenada. Although a significant number of slaves were involved, they fought on both sides (the majority being on the side of Fédon and his forces). Predominantly led by free mixed-race French-speakers, the stated purpose was to create a black republic as had already occurred in neighbouring Haiti rather than to free slaves, so it is not properly called a slave rebellion, although freedom of the slaves would have been a consequence of its success. Under the leadership of Julien Fédon, owner of a plantation in the mountainous interior of the island, and encouraged by French Revolutionary leaders on Guadeloupe, the rebels seized control of most of the island (St. George's, the capital, was never taken), but were eventually defeated by a military expedition led by General Ralph Abercromby.
Planning for the rebellion began in March 1793, when Fédon started converting his Belvidere coffee and cocoa plantation into a fortified headquarters and planting crops for his army. In early June 1795, two of his colleagues travelled to neighbouring Guadeloupe, then under the control of French revolutionary commissioners to receive arms, training and commissions, one of which made Fédon General-in-chief of the Grenadian rebel army. On the night of 2 March, this force simultaneously attacked Gouyave and Grenville; the former was relatively peaceful, but in the latter the white population was killed. Many hostages were taken. The British made a number of unsuccessful attempts at assaulting Belvidere; the estate was near the top of a very steep mountain, and almost inaccessible. After the failure of one such attack, Fédon ordered the deaths of around 40 white hostages.
For their part, the rebel army waged a campaign of looting, pillage and arson on the island's plantations, while skirmishing with the British. Both sides attempted to capture and recapture headlands and outposts with varying degrees of success. As the Royal Navy maintained an increasingly effective blockade of the island, Fédon's army was increasingly isolated and suffering from lack of reinforcements and military supplies. His force also paid the price for destroying so many crops the year before, as now a food shortage began. The British, on the other hand, received a number of large augmentations to their strength until, in June 1796, they launched another, successful assault on Belvidere. Fédon's army was routed, and his fate remains a mystery; it was assumed that he drowned trying to escape to Trinidad, but there were also reported sightings of him into the next century. As a result of Fédon's rebellion, French influence in Grenada was eradicated once and for all. Many rebels were executed, some, especially the slaves, without trial. The island's economy was devastated; whereas it had been an economic powerhouse before the rebellion, plantations and distilleries had been destroyed, causing around £2,500,000 of damage.
Although there was a dearth in scholarship regarding the rebellion until the 1960s—particularly in comparison to that of Haiti, for example—since then it has been the focus of increased study, particularly regarding the extent to which it was either a slave rebellion or part of the broader French Revolution. Fédon himself has remained an important figure in Grenadian political culture, and his rebellion is considered to have influenced not only the emancipation of slaves in the Caribbean of the next century, but a revolutionary tradition that came to a head in 1979 with the Grenadian Revolution under Maurice Bishop. Fédon is now seen as important not only for leading the rebellion but also as being at the intersection of a multiplicity of historiographical thought, such as race, revolution, Empire and slavery. Fédon's rebellion has also been the subject of a resurgence of interest in popular culture, having been the subject of a number of plays and poems, and being central to Grenada's tourist industry.
Background
Late 18th-century Grenada was a 120 square miles (310 km2) island in the South-Eastern Caribbean, with a population of 1,661 whites, 415 free coloured and 26,211 slaves. Geographically it is characterised by mountains, dense forests and steep ravines. Originally colonised by France, it was formally ceded it to Britain by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. At the same time, the British administration introduced legislation restricting the King's new subjects from official positions in governing the island. Although five years later this stopped being enforced—"to the consternation of old British subjects", comments the historian Edward L. Cox—in 1793, the Privy Council ordained that this gradual process of rehabilitation was illegal and returned the status quo—and the status of Catholics—to the 1763 position. Cox argues that as a result, "rather than solving immediately and permanently Grenada's nagging political problem the ruling may have contributed directly to the imminent rebellion", as there was now a ready-made skein of discontent for Fédon to tap into. The French re-captured the island during the American Revolutionary War, after Comte d'Estaing won the bloody land and naval Battle of Grenada in July 1779. This demonstrated to both the populace and the world that Britain could, with effort, be dislodged. However, the island was restored to Britain with the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. It was a heavy cotton-producing island, and as such was integral to Britain's Industrial Revolution and Economic boom. From this point on, argue Candlin and Pybus, "the British reoccupied Grenada with a renewed sense of purpose, determined to send a clear message of racial superiority and religious intolerance". The context of the country's political tribulations, argues Martin, was "an oppressive slave plantation complex", with a recent history of frequent, if unsuccessful, slave rebellions.
News of the French revolution was, says the historian Kit Candlin, "particularly prescient" in Grenada, especially as two-thirds of the 5,000 free population were French, or gens de couleur. In the early days of the revolution, French planters appear to have remained resistant to the revolution's call to violence. In August 1790 for example, Fédon himself signed a petition against growing radicalism on the island, which claimed that both French and British planters were at risk, although this may also have been a deliberate strategy to defer suspicion. The political upheavals in nearby Haiti provided the motivation for a similar rebellion in Grenada, and also provided a sufficient diversion to allow it to happen. It was not, however, strictly a slave rebellion. In the aftermath, it was noted that perhaps only half the island's slave population had joined the rebels, the other half, comments Candlin, were "found cowering in their plantations or discovered aimlessly wandering the island's roads, unsure of what to do".
At the time of the rebellion, Grenada had a population of approximately 1,125 free coloured residents—including 940 French free coloureds—and 185 British citizens. The situation was worse for the black French, argues Martin, as—even though they were free—they were generally treated as third-class citizens by both the white French and the British. The Governor, Ninian Home, had restricted entry to the island to all but a few French whom he deemed to have "sufferings are great and...principles good"; no slaves or free-coloureds were permitted, whom he believed to be exponents of radical egalitarian doctrines to a man.
Causes of the revolution
Internal grievances, rather than external influence, were the fundamental cause of Fédon's rebellion, argues the scholar John Angus Martin, being an "anti-discriminatory rebellion for social, political and religious rights by the French who orchestrated and led the rebellion against the British colonial government". There were some external influences: the biggest was the French Revolution and its ideology, Tom Paine's Rights of Man, the revolt in Haiti and the general discontent that pervaded the Caribbean during the period. There had been a smouldering discontent with the British administration for some time before the rebellion. The rebellion, led as it was by slave owners and planters rather than the slaves themselves indicates that the French revolution that inspired it was seen as a method of enabling social mobility for the French rather than to free slaves. The long term origin of the revolt, argues Jacobs, was "more than a century of slave resistance and also in French discontent over British rule", while the immediate French revolutionary context "played out at the crossroads of nationality, race and political belonging".
British (Protestant) governance of the island had become "increasingly harsh", suggests Martin, especially against the French—Catholic—inhabitants whose previous political and social influence and power was now increasingly restricted by the new management. In a campaign to eradicate the French historical presence, the French language had been all but eradicated officially, and vestiges of French law also. Although the intention to allow a form of Representative government had been declared in a royal proclamation, there was a fear that a democratic assembly would be dominated by the French. To this end, all prospective members of the assembly had to take an oath against transubstantiation—in effect against the Catholic church, and therefore against the French, who were majoritively of the Catholic faith. As early as 1779 the British Colonial Governor, Sir George Macartney wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Germain, telling him "I have seen at Grenada the impossibility of English and French ever assimilating together". McCartney was more worried though about the loyalty of many of the English speakers. While the "leading British" as he called them were loyal to the King, McCartney expressed doubts regarding the "overseers, clerks, low-class planters and tradesmen", whom he called, as a body, "mere banditti, averse to all order, discipline and obedience...turbulent, mutinous and impatient of restraint'.
It appears that the native slave and free coloured population did not unduly worry the administration, who saw them as being unlikely to rebel of their own accord. The influx of a large number of French from surrounding islands, however, was a cause for concern. They worried the British, who, says Candlin "regarded them first with deep suspicion then actively tried to oppress them through legislation, each law underscoring further the inherent difficulty members of the white community had at distinguishing friend from foe". On one occasion, Fédon's wife had been arrested for breaching a restriction and had been imprisoned for some weeks before he could secure her release. Marie Rose Fédon had been unable to prove she was a free woman under a ruling enacted the previous year. Those unable to do so within six weeks were to be sold into slavery.
The scholar of Caribbean history Laurent Dubois suggests that "chafing under [British] regulations, the free coloureds of Grenada watched intently as the nearby French colonies instituted policies of racial equality". For their part, the British—who knew what had happened in other islands—expected "anarchy, confusion and killings...Increasingly the Governor's correspondence was filled with worries for security and his fear of the island's French inhabitants, especially the free coloureds". There were rumours of a rising some months before it took place, and slaves were offered incentives to report to their owners anything they learned. Lieutenant Governor Home appears to have been expecting an invasion from the French in Guadeloupe rather than an initial uprising, as he devoted most of the militia to manning coastal lookouts.
Planning
Planning of the rebellion seems to have begun around March 1793. Dr Hay later reported that a plantain crop of approximately 32 acres (0.13 km2) had been planted in Belvidere around that time "for the express purpose of the present revolution". This coincides with the appointment of Ninian Home as governor and may have been a direct consequence of it. Home, a Scotsman, was an established persecutor of Catholics. Midnight meetings were held at which French revolutionary literature was distributed. The administration's lack of intelligence and materiel allowed the conspiracy to develop safe from British interference. There was a kernel of around 50 individuals of diverse social composition, including white bourgeoise and free-French blacks. No slaves, however, appear to have been involved in the planning stages of the rebellion, although they were responsible for the complex defensive earthworks and trenches around Fédon's camp. It is likely that Fedon and his comrades may have felt undermanned and in need of numerical support, which would have encouraged them to broaden their base after the planning had been finished. The rebellion was originally intended to be launched at Christmas 1794 rather than, in the event, three months later. Jacobs considers it possible that financing may have been at the root of this delay, as on 12 January 1795 the Fédons sold "eight Negro slaves" for 10,401 each; why else, questions Jacobs, would Fédon "sell slaves that he knew that he was going to free in a matter of weeks?" In the event, Fédon was clearly willing to maximise his use of slaves before freeing them, presumably as a way of guaranteeing that they performed the labouring necessary to his plans: Dr Hay noted that Fedon maintained their servile status "till the last moment".
Supplies were initially received by French Jacobin revolutionaries in Guadeloupe—including materiel and financing—under Victor Hugues. The conspiracy had been successfully hidden from the authorities, notes Martin, and "it wasn't until the day leading up to the rebellion that some British residents began to notice unusual activities among the rebels, but by then it was too late to act".
Participants
The first slaves to join Fédon and his comrades were their own, whom they had freed as one of their first acts. Candlin has estimated that around 12,500 slaves took an active role in the rebellion, or half the island's slave population. Praedial slaves appear to have been more militant, generally, than house slaves, and a contemporary complained that it was "the most trusted, and best treated, both men and women, [who] were the first to join, and the most active in the insurrection". Although the slaves who revolted were doing so for with the aim of their own emancipation as their primary goal, they appear to have had a longer-term intention of abolishing the system itself. The French white and freedmen probably only amounted to around 150 individuals, however, while the leadership cadre possessed a "stark diversity of ideas and personalities" among them. Many had been business associates of Fédon and his brothers-in-law, or legal witnesses to deeds and charters; Murphy suggests that "personal ties, as well as the belief that political rights should be extended to men regardless of race, may have motivated at least some of the white participants". Of the rebel army in the field on the rebellion's outbreak, Craton has estimated its size at around 350 who possessed firearms, 250 with pikes or swords, and the remainder awaiting weapons. Fédon's rebels were assisted by the island's Catholic priesthood, who were later accused of fermenting dissent, as well as mulattos who had originally propagated the ideals of the French revolution in 1789–1790 but had been then driven underground by the British. Cox argues that the initial success of the rebellion is a direct result of the fact that it "seemed to promise something to all its participants".