A leading Vincentian historian has highlighted a rarely acknowledged fact about the country’s past, that St. Vincent and the Grenadines had one of the shortest periods of African enslavement in the Caribbean, making its colonial experience remarkably distinct from most other regional territories.
Speaking at the recent official handing over of the new history book, Dr. Arnold Thomas, one of the book’s authors, underscored the significance of this historical detail during an event hosted at the UWI Global Campus.
Reading from Chapter Three, Dr. Thomas noted that while African enslavement defined much of the Caribbean’s colonial past, the story of sugar and slavery in St. Vincent unfolded differently.
Dr. Thomas explained that instead of being an early hub of plantation slavery, St. Vincent’s rugged terrain and strong resistance from Indigenous peoples and Africans created a different historical trajectory, one of resistance, refuge, and resilience.
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