Petite Savanne
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15°15′15″N 61°16′10″W / 15.25417°N 61.26944°W Petite Savanne (French for "little savannah") was a village on the southeast side of Dominica in Saint Patrick Parish. It had an estimated population of 1,200 in 2015.[1] The region the town was built on features some of Dominica's steepest terrain;[2] the slopes were composed largely of silt and clay.[3]
Settlement and Land Tenure
The origins of settlement in Petite Savanne are rooted in the land distribution policies of the colonial era. When Britain took control of Dominica in 1763, the island was surveyed and divided into lots, with the most fertile and accessible land reserved for large plantations. A strip of land approximately 66 yards wide encircling the island’s perimeter, known as the “King’s (or Queen’s) Three Chains,” was set aside for government use, including jetties and fortifications. [4]
Following full emancipation in 1838, formerly enslaved labourers were permitted to remain on plantation lands only on condition of continued employment there. Many were consequently displaced, settling as squatters along the Queen’s Three Chains in coastal communities. Elsewhere, French settlers of modest means (poor whites from Martinique who had intermingled with Kalinago and free African populations) came to occupy rugged, marginal lands lying between the established estates. Petite Savanne, along with settlements such as Good Hope and Petite Soufrière, developed in this manner, built by communities who farmed and subsisted on terrain the plantation economy had bypassed.
