Grenada

The Indigenous Kalinago (Island Carib) fiercely resisted European settlement, and Grenada was not colonised until French settlement began in 1649, followed by violent conflict. The French laid out plantations of sugar cane and indigo, and later cocoa, worked by enslaved Africans. Britain took the island under the Treaty of Paris in 1763, lost it to France in 1779, and regained it in 1783; a major enslaved and free-coloured revolt led by Julien Fédon in 1795–96 nearly drove the British out.

After emancipation in the 1830s the estates turned increasingly to nutmeg, introduced in 1843, which flourished so well that it became the island's top export — the nutmeg is on the national flag. The island moved through "associated statehood" to full independence from Britain in 1974 under Eric Gairy.

In 1979 the leftist New Jewel Movement, led by Maurice Bishop, seized power in a bloodless coup and built ties with Cuba and the Soviet bloc. In October 1983 a hardline faction arrested and executed Bishop and several colleagues; days later, a United States-led force invaded, citing the safety of American medical students and regional stability. Democratic elections resumed in December 1984, and Grenada has been a stable parliamentary democracy since, though Hurricane Ivan in 2004 damaged or destroyed 90 per cent of its homes and most of its nutmeg crop, and Hurricane Beryl, a Category 4 storm, damaged or destroyed 99 per cent of buildings on Carriacou and 70 per cent on Petite Martinique in July 2024.

Grenadian culture is Afro-Caribbean and Anglophone, with a French Catholic inheritance visible in place names, saints' festivals, and the older Patois. Most Grenadians are Christian — Catholic, Anglican, and a growing number of evangelical and Adventist congregations — and church and family are the anchors of community life.

Spicemas, the August carnival, is the cultural high point: calypso and soca competitions, steel bands, the mud-and-oil-covered "Jab Jab" devils of J'ouvert, and the parade of costumed bands. The "big drum" or Nation Dance of Carriacou, tracing families back to specific African peoples, is a distinctive survival.

Life is unhurried and neighbourly, built around the rum shop, the fish fry (the Friday night one at Gouyave is famous), cricket, and Sunday church. Ties to a large diaspora in the UK, the US, and Canada run deep, and remittances and returnees are woven into island life.

Around a third of Grenada's roughly 113,000 people live in and around St George's, the capital, whose pastel warehouses ring the deep Carenage harbour beneath Fort George. The rest live in coastal villages and hillside farming settlements, and on the smaller islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique to the north.

The economy runs on tourism, spices (nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, cloves), a chocolate industry built on Grenada's cocoa, fishing, and St George's University, a private medical school and international university. The citizenship-by-investment programme adds revenue. Rebuilding after Ivan and Beryl, and climate resilience, remain long-term priorities.

Daily life follows the fishing and farming rhythm, the minibus into town, the market for produce and spices, and a strong weekend of sport, church, and the liming (hanging out) that is a shared Caribbean institution.

Grenadian cooking is Creole and spice-forward, unsurprisingly. The national dish is "oil down," a one-pot stew of breadfruit, salted meat or fish, dumplings, callaloo, and vegetables simmered in coconut milk until its oil is absorbed or settles to the bottom of the pot.

Around it are street foods such as doubles, aloo pie, and dal puri wrapped round a curry, often goat; fried bakes and fish cakes; and plenty of fresh fish — Gouyave's Fish Friday serves it in quantity. Nutmeg and mace turn up everywhere, from Grenadian spice cake to rum-raisin ice cream.

Drinks run to rum and Carib beer, brewed on the island since 2002, and Grenada's cocoa, grown here since 1714, is also made into chocolate that the island exports.

St George's is one of the prettiest harbour towns in the Caribbean, worth a wander for the Carenage waterfront, the hilltop forts, the market square, and the small national museum. Just south, Grand Anse is the island's showpiece beach, and offshore lies the Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park, the world's first, where divers and snorkellers visit submerged figures now colonised by coral.

The mountainous interior is protected in the Grand Etang National Park, with a crater lake, rainforest trails, mona monkeys, and a string of waterfalls — Annandale, Concord, and the Seven Sisters — reachable on short hikes. Spice and cocoa estates, and the nutmeg processing plant at Gouyave, still the largest building in Grenada, show the crop that defines the island.

To the north, a ferry or short flight reaches Carriacou, a quiet island of boatbuilding, clear water, and the Big Drum tradition, and tiny Petite Martinique. The windward east coast, wilder and less visited, has surf beaches and the ruins of old estate great houses.