tations and masters to political parties and party leaders.
More than 90 percent of Grenada's residents are black or of mixed race--the descendants of African slaves who worked the island's sugarcane plantations during the 18th century. White and East Indian minorities make up the rest of the population: "With rare exceptions, the dominant classes have always, throughout the [Caribbean] region's recorded history, comprised a small fraction of the population and the powerless the vast majority" (Thomas 3).
Grenada's bountiful spices and sugarcane made it a prize for early European explorers. The island was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1498: "Since the days of Columbus, the region has been colonised by the European powers, and, more recently, has come under the domination and sway of the United States" (Thomas 3). In 1609, the British tried to colonize Grenada but were held off by the Carib Indians, the native inhabitants of the Caribbean region.
During the next 150 years, possession of Grenada shifted between France and Great Britain. Both countries imported large numbers of African slaves to work the sugarcane plantations. In 1783, Grenada became a British territory. Slave uprisings, provoked by the French who remained on the island plagued the government until 1834, when the British Parliament passed the Emancipation Act, which abolished slavery in the British empire. Many former slaves emigrated to Trinidad, which offered better working conditions, or settled in the interior of Grenada and became landowners. With no slaves to work the plantations, sugarcane profits declined drastically. The British tried unsuccessfully to bring in large numbers of Indian and Malayan indentured laborers, but were forced to develop means of mechanizing production: "In that abolition forced the planters to write off the bulk of their capital (slaves), it is hardly surprising that it also heralded the first systematic atte...