colony · Mesoamerica and the Caribbean
French Grenada
Origins
Jacques Dyel du Parquet, governor of Martinique, bought rights to Grenada and landed with settlers in 1649, founding a fort at the site of St George's. War with the Kalinago followed; in 1651 the last defenders reportedly leapt from a cliff in the north, remembered as Le Morne des Sauteurs. Du Parquet sold the island to the Comte de Cérillac in 1657.
Rule and society
Grenada came under the French West India Company in 1664 and the crown in 1674, administered as a dependency of Martinique. Fort Royal guarded a fine natural harbour. Settlers developed sugar, coffee, cacao and indigo estates worked by enslaved Africans, and by the 1750s the colony had dozens of sugar mills. Catholicism was the only permitted faith.
Decline and legacy
British forces captured Grenada in 1762, and the Treaty of Paris of 1763 ceded it to Britain, beginning the Colony of Grenada. France retook it in 1779 but returned it in 1783. French place names, Catholic parishes and a French-based Creole survive from this period.
Lineage
On the connections map
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- French Grenada was a colony of French Empire1649 CE – 1763 CE
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Cite this page
- APA
- The Epoch Institute. (2026). French Grenada. In The Epoch Institute States Register. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/french-grenada
- MLA
- “French Grenada.” The Epoch Institute States Register, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/french-grenada. Accessed .
- Chicago
- The Epoch Institute. “French Grenada.” The Epoch Institute States Register. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/french-grenada.
- Harvard
- The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘French Grenada’, The Epoch Institute States Register. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/french-grenada (Accessed: ).
Last reviewed October 2026Random state ↻