War in the Caribbean
When war between Britain and Revolutionary France erupted in 1793, the overseas colonies belonging to Britain, France and their European allies, including in the Caribbean, were also dragged into the war.
The French colony of Saint Domingue, modern-day Haiti, led the way with revolts by its enslaved people from 1791. Abolition of slavery was declared on the island in 1793, ratified by the French Revolutionary government in Paris in 1794.
In the Windward Islands, Britain and France are vying to get the upper hand. A French-born revolutionary government commissioner, Victor Hugues, captured the island of Guadeloupe from Britain in 1794. He declared the abolition of slavery on Guadeloupe 7 June 1794, as a way of ensuring an increase to his very small force and safeguard the occupation of the island against the British. The day after he announced the abolition, he issued an invitation to the now formerly enslaved to form battalions to reclaim Guadeloupe for the French Republic.[1] By encouraging those on the plantations to fight, Hugues significantly increased the forces at his disposal. Once Guadeloupe was back under French control, Hugues looked to extend French influence to Martinique, St Lucia, Grenada and even St Vincent, sending allies, weapons, troops first to St Lucia as the easier target.
Having reclaimed St Lucia for the French in 1795, Hugues’ reinforcements along with the so-called army in the woods are only able to hold the island for a few months and the ‘French’ forces surrender in May 1796 as Abercromby’s campaign gathers momentum. Abercromby's troops will then force surrender on St Vincent and Grenada in June 1796.
After capitulating on St Lucia, St Vincent and Grenada in turn, over 2500 men, women and children are sent to Britain as prisoners of war to remove them from the Caribbean and shift the balance firmly in Britain’s favour.
[1] See Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens (University of North Carolina press, 2004); Michael Duffy, Soldiers, Sugar and Seapower (Oxford, OUP, 1987). p. 109.; Frédéric Régent, ‘Armement des hommes de couleur et liberté aux Antilles : le cas de la Guadeloupe pendant l’Ancien régime et la Révolution’ AHRF 348 (avril-juin 2007), p. 41-56 https://doi.org/10.4000/ahrf.9023
Kate Astbury and Abigail Coppins' research into the war in the Windward islands has been fed into the pilot learning resources project for St Vincent and the Grenadine's teachers as well as the St Paul's cathedral trail.