Emplaced Myths of Fédon’s Rebellion in Tourism Representations

Fédon’s Rebellion, widely characterized as a slave revolt, took place from March 1795 to June 1796 on the Caribbean island of Grenada. Julien Fédon, a mixed-race French Catholic plantation owner, was the principal leader of this event. Today the rebellion is part of Grenada’s cultural heritage and is associated with several places on the island potentially visited by tourists. This paper broadly examines the ways the rebellion is characterized in tourism information sources through content analysis and specifically considers the overarching myths about Julien Fédon and the underlying myths about slavery that are associated with discrete places on the island through narrative analysis. Narratives of the rebellion has the potential to raise awareness about the struggle for freedom in Grenada, but it remains a generalized story that focuses on the outlaw hero/villain instead of the thousands of enslaved people he was supposedly fighting for.