Grenada Island
The Spice Island of the Caribbean has all it takes to seduce adventurers and gastronomes alike.
Cultural overview
Grenada is located in the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea, at the southern end of the Grenadines island chain. It consists of the island of Grenada itself and six smaller islands which lie to the north of the main island.
About 2 million years ago, Grenada was formed as an underwater volcano. It is very mountainous, with Mount St. Catherine towering at an impressive 840 m (2,760 ft). Several small rivers with beautiful waterfalls flow into the sea from these mountains.
The island is also known as the Spice Isle of the Caribbean for a good reason: you can find there an abundance of nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and ginger.
Grenada was inhabited by Arawaks and Island Caribs before it was invaded and colonized by Europeans (Christopher Columbus sighted Grenada in 1498 during his third voyage to the new world).
82% of the Grenadine citizens are descendants of the African slaves who were captured and forced against their will to the island by the English and French colonists. Subsequently, there is a small community of French and English descendants. The rest of the population is of mixed descent (13%).
Administrative divisions
Grenada is a Commonwealth realm. As Queen of Grenada, Elizabeth II is head of state. The Caribbean island country of Grenada is divided into regions known as parishes.
A parish defines a territorial unit or region that, historically, was usually an area under the pastoral care served by a local church as an ecclesiastical administrative unit and later used by map-makers to set boundaries to an area of land.
Traditionally a settlement or village would deploy itself around a church and later grow to become a town or even a city. Therefore, a parish has now come to mean an administrative division and is used so by several countries as the smallest unit (or lowest tier) of local government.
The varying sizes and shapes of each parish were initially influenced by the island’s earlier history and according to the land that was granted to the first settlers that claimed that territory during the colonial years of the island.
The French cartographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703–1772) draw several editions of a chart of the island of Grenada showing the earlier French parish divisions and was published as Carte de L’Isle de la Grenade in Paris 1756.
After a century the French capitulated to the British and formally ceded the island to Britain in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris. New parishes were formed.
The nation’s capital St. George’s, which is located within the parish of Saint George, and even to this day the original border-lines are still well defined.
There are currently 6 parishes and two dependencies in Grenada:
Saint Andrew, Saint David, Saint George, Saint John, Saint Mark, Saint Patrick + Carriacou and Petite Martinique.
Sources:
PureGrenada.com
GeoPostcodes.com
LonelyPlanet.com
Wikipedia-Grenada
Wikipedia-Parishes of Grenada
