ABSTRACT
The history of British colonial rule in Dominica, which commenced as late as 1763 on account of over two hundred years of Karifuna resistance, came under intellectual and political scrutiny during the mid-nineteenth century. Debates on the (im)moral economy of slavery and outrage at continuing Black dispossession and exploitation in post-slavery reconstruction invoked the allegedly disturbing process of Karifuna genocide. This chapter examines Karifuna's regional oppositional postures and strategies in the immediate post-Columbian dispensation, and takes the narrative through to their retreat and consolidation in Dominica's mountains at the end of the eighteenth century. The success of Karifunas in holding on to a significant portion of the Windwards, and their weakening of planting settlements in the Leewards, fuelled the determination of the English and French to destroy them. By the mid-seventeenth century, European merchants, planters and colonial officials were in agreement that Karifunas “were a barbarous and cruel set of savages beyond reason or persuasion and must therefore be eliminated”.
