Grenada

Grenada is an island nation in the southeastern Caribbean Sea including the southern Grenadines. Grenada is the second-smallest independent country in the Western Hemisphere (after Saint Kitts and Nevis). more...

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It is located north of Trinidad and Tobago, and south of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

History 1498-1877

The recorded history of Grenada begins in 1498, when Christopher Columbus first sighted the island and gave it the alias Conception Island, and later called it Granada. At the time the Island Caribs (Kalinago) lived there and called it knouhogue. The Spaniards did not permanently settle in Camerhogue. Later the English failed their first settlement attempts, but the French fought and conquered Grenada from the Caribs circa 1650. At one point many Caribs leaped to their death near Sauteurs, a present day northern town in Grenada; the Caribs opted not to be captives of the French. Subsequently, this resulted in warfare between the Caribs of present day Dominica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the French invaders. The French took control of Camerhogue and named the new French colony Grenade. The colony was ceded to the United Kingdom in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris. Grenada was made a Crown Colony in 1877.

History 1958 - 1984 (Independence and Revolution)

The island was a province of the short-lived West Indies Federation from 1958 to 1962. In 1967 Grenada attained the position of "Associated State of the United Kingdom", which meant that Grenada was now responsible for her own internal affairs, and the UK was responsible for her defence and foreign affairs. Independence was granted in 1974 under the leadership of the then Premier Sir Eric Matthew Gairy, who became the first Prime Minister of Grenada. Eric Gairy's government became increasingly authoritarian and dictatorial, prompting a coup d'état in March 1979 by the charismatic and popular left-wing leader of the New Jewel Movement, Maurice Bishop. Bishop's failure to allow elections, coupled with his Marxist-Leninist socialism and cooperation with communist Cuba did not sit well with the country's neighbours, including Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Dominica and the United States. During this time Cuba began helping to build an airstrip that had commercial and potentially military uses.

A power struggle developed between Bishop and a majority of the ruling People's Revolutionary Government (PRG), including the co-founder of the NJM, Bernard Coard. This led to Bishop's house arrest; he and many others were eventually executed at Fort George on October 19, 1983 during a hardline PRA coup which brought a new pro-Soviet/Cuban government under General Hudson Austin to power. At the time of the coup there were about 50 Cuban military advisors and 700 armed construction workers on the island.

Read more at Wikipedia.org