Founding of Grenada

Grenada became independent from the United Kingdom as a small island state in the southeastern Caribbean. Christopher Columbus sighted the island in 1498, and the French began settling it in the 1650s, displacing the Carib inhabitants. Britain acquired it in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris, and it developed as a plantation colony worked by enslaved Africans, now known especially for nutmeg and spices. Eric Gairy, who had built a political movement among agricultural workers, became the first prime minister of independent Grenada. His government was overthrown in a coup in 1979 by the New Jewel Movement under Maurice Bishop, and in 1983 Bishop was killed in a power struggle, which led to an invasion of the island by the United States and several Caribbean states.

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