Island Hopping Martinique History

ISLAND HPPING

A Brief History of Martinique

In 1493, on his second voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus stopped at the island of Hispaniola where the indigenous Arawak and Ciguayo Indians warned the Admiral of All Oceans that there were ferocious cannibalistic tribes on the islands to the south. This did not deter Columbus as he set forth for Dominica, Marie Galante (which he named after his ship), and Guadeloupe where his crew was able to take on fresh water. From here Columbus sailed to Matinino, the Island of Women, which was said to be inhabited by an tribe of fierce Amazons, reason enough for the Great Discover not to land on what is today known as Martinique. Finally, in June of 1502, Columbus actually set foot on Martinique at what is today Le Carbet on the western coast of Martinique, just south of St. Pierre. Instead of a fierce tribe of Amazons, Columbus found the cannibalistic Caribs who sprang from the Rio Orinoco region of Venezuela, descendants of the Galibi who lived between the Rio Orinoco and the Amazon.

The Spanish never took an interest in Martinique, most likely because the island had no mineral resources (spelled G-O-L-D!). The French however, WERE interested in the island and on June 25, 1635, two settlers, de l’Olive and du Plessis arrived in Martinique from Dieppe landed near Le Carbet. The land on this part of Martinique is mountainous and the two gentleman soon declared the island unfit for farming claiming that the topography, as well as snakes, made the island less than ideal for their desires so they quickly abandoned Martinique for Guadeloupe.

A few months later, on September 15, 1635, Pierre Belain d’Esnambuc landed a few miles north of Le Carbet at what is now St. Pierre and claimed Martinique for France. D’Esnambuc built a small fort and a chapel at the mouth of Rivière Roxelane, founded the Trading Company of St. Christopher, and named the settlement after the saint for whom he was named. D’Esnambuc passed away two years later and his nephew, Jacques du Parquet, became Lieutenant General of Martinique and the colony truly began to grow. Du Parquet improved relations with the Caribs (hoping to avoid bloodshed), introduced sugar cane to the island, and set up a militia unit at Fort Royal, which today is known as Fort-de-France. In 1642, Louis XIII authorized the use of African slaves in the French Antilles and the planters in Martinique found themselves with a new, and cheap, work force.

In 1650, Jacques du Parquet purchased Martinique and became governor, a position he held until his death in 1658 when his wife took over control of the island. She had her hands full trying to keep the planters happy and soon found herself failing in her efforts to keep the colonists from waging war against the Caribs. A very fertile area of Martinique known as Cabesterre was at the center of the conflict and the Martinician militia began attacking the Carib tribes that were living along the northeastern coast and the Caravalle Peninsula. The Catholic Church even joined in the conflict as the Jesuits joined with the colonists to attack from the sea while the Dominicans launched an inland invasion. The two groups agreed that whichever order arrived first would be in charge of all future parishes on this part of the island, an agreement in which the Dominicans prevailed. In 1660, a peace treaty was signed with the few remaining Caribs, most of whom had been killed, expelled, or simply fled to Dominica or St. Vincent, the Carib’s last places of refuge which the French agreed to leave alone.

In 1664, Louis XIV restructured Martinique, Guadeloupe, Marie-Galante, Grenada, and the Grenadines when he ordered that the islands be purchased by the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales (which controlled foreign commerce) and favorably compensated du Parquet’s heirs for their interests in the islands. Five years later Martinique became the capital of the French islands when the Marquis de Baas became Governor General of the French islands in the Caribbean. One of de Baas’ first moves was to reinforce Fort Royal, a timely decision as was shown in 1674 when Dutch troops attacked the fort and were defeated. A year later, in 1675, all of the French Caribbean colonies were ceded back to the Crown and the control of commerce was removed from the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales. In 1692, the capital of Martinique was moved from St. Pierre to Fort Royal.

In 1717, France tried to ensure exclusive trade regulations with its colonies in the Caribbean and tried to stop illegal sugar trading between the French islands and their neighbors. Representatives of the French Government, Governor General Antoine d’Arcy and his steward, Louis-Balthazar de Rincouart d’Hérouville, arrived in Martinique and were invited to a banquet at the Bourgeot estate near Le Diamant. The unsuspecting dinner guests were taken captive by a hundred furious colonists and expelled from the island. France soon relaxed the commerce regulations enough to satisfy Martinique’s irate planters and put an end to their rebellion which became known as the Gaoulé, said to be a Carib word for revolt.

Realizing the sugar wealth of Martinique, the English entered the scene in 1762 when they attacked Fort Royal from inland and took control of the island for the first of several periods of British rule. The British occupation only lasted 9 months as the Treaty of Paris returned Martinique to France while ceding Canada to the British. Island defenses were strengthened and Fort Bourbon (now Fort Dessaix) was built on the hills overlooking Fort Royal to protect the fort from another inland invasion. During the French Revolution, England again took control of Martinique when the rural planters, the Royalists, joined forces with the British to recapture the island in 1794 from the Republicans who controlled Fort Royal and St. Pierre. The British held the island until 1802 when Napoléon Bonaparte took control of Martinique with the Treaty of Amiens. Of course Napoléon may be said to have a particular interest in Martinique, his wife, the Empress Joséphine, was born there as Marie-Josèphe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie.

Legend has it that when the future Empress Joséphine was born in 1763, a witch named Euphrèmie David predicted that the baby would one day be more than a queen. When Joséphine came of age at 16 she wed the Viscomte Alexandre de Beauharnais in an arranged marriage. De Beauharnais was a wealthy French Army officer, and Joséphine soon gave birth to two children, Eugène, the future Viceroy of Italy, and Hortense, the future Queen of Holland. The French Revolution found Joséphine and her husband incarcerated, Joséphine was released, but her husband was guillotined, which may have been just fine with Joséphine as there was said to be no love lost between the couple, it seems that Alexandre had originally wanted to marry one of Joséphine’s more attractive sisters. Joséphine found herself single at the age of 31 and soon met, fell in love with, and married an unknown officer named Napoléon Bonaparte. On December 1, 1804, Joséphine became Empress Joséphine when Napoléon became Emperor by placing a crown on his own head. Napoléon had their marriage annulled in 1809 because Joséphine was unable to bear him an heir. Joséphine was over 40 at this time (it is said that Joséphine pretended that she lost her birth certificate so Napoléon would not find out her true age), six years older than her husband who then had a son with his new wife Marie Louise, the daughter of the Emperor of Austria. After her life with Napoléon, Joséphine lived quietly outside Paris at Château de Malmaison where Napoléon would often visit her until her death of pneumonia in 1814. Joséphine’s daughter married Napoléon’s brother Louis who was installed as the King of Holland when Napoléon created that position. Their son, also named Louis, became the Emperor of France, Napoléon III in 1852.

It is said that Napoléon reintroduced slavery to the island by repealing a law that the Republicans had passed in 1794 to repeal previous slavery legislation. This slavery repeal never actually never came into effect as the British, who favored slavery, almost immediately took control of Martinique. In 1809, the British returned to Martinique as conquerors and controlled the island until 1814 when a treaty was signed in Paris in which France lost St. Lucia and Tobago but regained Martinique and Guadeloupe.

In 1834, England abolished slavery, but France did not do so until May 22, 1848, and the intervening years were filled with unrest and slave riots on Martinique. During this period many Martinician slaves fled to the English islands and white French planters found themselves suppressing more and more slave uprisings such as those that plagued St. Pierre in 1831 and Grande Anse in 1833. It became clear to the government of France that slavery was quickly becoming a thing of the past and despite heavy opposition from the planter’s, and thanks in no small part to the lobbying of Victor Schoelcher, the undersecretary to the Naval Minister in charge of the islands, slavery was abolished on March 4, 1848. The official decree was signed by Schoelcher, the namesake for a small coastal community northwest of Fort de France, on April 27, 1848. The decree, besides granting slave owners compensation for their losses, stipulated that the abolition law would not be instituted in the French colonies for two months. Upon learning of the delay, slaves revolted in St. Pierre and the Governor of Martinique found himself with no choice but to emancipate the slaves early, on May 22, 1848.

Plantation owners on Martinique found, like their British counterparts had a decade earlier, that they needed a new source of labor to work their fields. Between 1852 and 1884, over 25,000 indentured servants brought over from India became the primary source of Martinique’s manpower. The compensation awarded to the former slave owners allowed them to reorganize production and 25 large sugar factories were constructed by the end of the 1800s. Due to the decline of the Caribbean sugar industry, by World War II only 15 of these production facilities remained and today only one functioning sugar factory still stands on Martinique.

By far, the biggest event of the 20th century, as far as Martinique is concerned, was the eruption of Mt. Pelée. On May 8, 1902, an estimated 29,933 people died and the city of St. Pierre, the Paris of the Caribbean, was completely destroyed by a huge eruption that decimated the landscape without a major lava flow.

A few years after the catastrophe at St. Pierre, World War I broke out and over 52,000 French West Indians were called up for service. World War II again threw the world into turmoil and the French Islands found themselves isolated under the Vichy government. Gold from France was stored in Martinique and the Allies blockaded the island resulting in a shortage of basic supplies for the islanders. Many Martinicians fled to other islands to join the Free French movement and on June 30, 1943, Martinique joined de Gaulle’s Free France.

On March 19, 1946, Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and Reunion Island had their status as a colony changed to that of a French Overseas Department, département d’outre-mer (DOM), meaning that the island is the same as France, the mother country, and all Martinicians enjoy the benefits of being French citizens. The political left pushed this assimilation as a means to insure greater social justice, yet today some of the same voices criticize the failure of the departmentalization claiming that it was only an attempt to keep the former colonies more dependent on France. Martinique later became a French région with the representation of four deputies in the French National Assembly and two Senators in the Sénat. The island has two local assemblies as well, the Conseil Régional, which deals with economic, labor, and territorial matters, and the Conseil Général, which handles social concerns. Martinique is divided up into 34 communities, each with its own mayor and administrators.