ABSTRACT
The United Kingdom governed Grenada, one of the Windward Islands, from the eighteenth century. In February 1951 a strike by members of the Manual and Mental Workers' Union led by Eric Matthew Gairy turned violent. The Bahamas became a British crown colony in 1717. Immigration of freed slaves in the nineteenth century helped to produce an overwhelmingly black population. The Bahamas generally avoided major civil violence during the first half of the twentieth century except for riots within Nassau in 1942 contained by local police without military assistance. The United Kingdom acquired colonial control of Jamaica in 1655. Slaves' descendents eventually constituted more than three-quarters of the population. Racial and labor tensions provoked violence and British military intervention during the late 1930s. The Cuban government of Fulgencio Batista collapsed in January 1959 following several years of guerrilla warfare.
