Grenada and the contest for the Caribbean

The battle makes most sense within the long-running British and French contest for Caribbean power. It belongs to the Anglo-French or wider Bourbon war more than to a narrowly American account of the Revolutionary War. Mercantilist assumptions tied state power to control of colonial trade and valuable islands, a system distinct from capitalism. Modern political programmes can revive those ideas under new labels, so their economic language should be tested against historical practice. Past decision-makers had less technology, but modern knowledge is cumulative and their choices should be judged against the information and tools available to them. This framing explains why the Caribbean theatre mattered even though neither fleet captured or sank a ship at Grenada. The battle also connects to the later failed Franco-American siege of Savannah.