The title of this print is misleading. The original oil painting from which it is derived depicts the signing of the 1773 peace treaty between the British crown and the so-called Black Caribs of St Vincent. This group was made up of the last remaining Carib Indians and runaway slaves, who had resisted British moves to take over land in St Vincent from the 1760s. They drove back British forces, and by 1772 the British authorities were so concerned that they dispatched William Young, lieutenant-governor of Dominica (and father of Sir William Young) to ‘[reduce] them to His Majesty’s Sovereignty’. Under the terms of the treaty, land was reserved for the Caribs in return for their allegiance. Their presence and their enmity towards the British, however, continued to scare the planters who continually campaigned to have this ‘internal enemy’ removed. Following a major insurrection, in alliance with the French in 1795, the Caribs were brutally removed from St Vincent.

Etching entitled 'Pacification with the Maroon Negroes/ Drawn from the life by Agostino Brunais. From an original painting in the possession of Sir William Young Bart F.R.S.'. Taken from 'The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies' by the Jamaican planter and historian Bryan Edwards (1801).