Fédon’s Rebellion

Fédon’s Rebellion began in Grenada in March 1795 during the French Revolutionary Wars. Julien Fédon and his allies seized much of the island’s interior, challenged British colonial government and drew on French revolutionary support and ideology while mobilising free people of colour, enslaved Africans and other opponents of British rule.

British forces gradually recovered the island during 1796 after severe fighting, and the suppression of the revolt reshaped Grenadian society and plantation politics. The conflict belongs simultaneously to Caribbean colonial history, the history of slavery and race, and the wider Anglo-French struggle of the War of the First Coalition.