1669 to 1808 · Caribbeanspan
Britain takes Grenada and turns it into a market for the French
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Under French rule Grenada received captives irregularly and in small numbers. British acquisition in 1763 changed that within a few years. Sugar planting expanded on the island, and Grenada took on a second function as a reshipment point, where people landed under the British flag were sold onward into French colonies whose own ports were closed to foreign shipping. Liverpool merchants came to account for more than 60 percent of documented arrivals by the late eighteenth century. About a third of those brought there had been embarked in the Bight of Biafra, which reflects the particular African connections the British trade had built. The reshipment business is the part to notice from a Haitian angle. National monopolies on paper were defeated routinely in practice, and an island under one flag fed the plantations of a rival. Saint-Domingue drew on more suppliers than the French merchant fleet, and the traffic ignored the boundaries the empires drew.
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