A Brief History The appeal of the French West Indies today is that nothing much happens on them. Not so in the “bad old days. ” Unlikely as it seems now, at one time these sugar islands were close to center stage as the great powers of Europe warred fiercely for world commercial domination. France knew a good thing when she seized one, but then so did Britain. It all began much more peacefully. Perhaps 2,000 years ago, Indians sometimes called “Saloides” from the Orinoco basin in South America began migrating up the Antilles chain, reaching Martinique and Guadeloupe before a.d. 200. A volcanic eruption on Martinique prevented these early island-hoppers from staying long; they soon vanished from history, leaving only the scantiest archaeological traces. By a.d. 300, a new and larger wave of Amerindians from the Orinoco basin settled on islands throughout the Caribbean. These were the Arawaks, who lived from fishing and planting, and produced beautiful pottery. For centuries these people had the islands to themselves. Then came the Caribs, and the tranquility was shattered. These Indians, also from South America, swept north in fast seagoing canoes, attacking and either eating or driving Arawak men off island after island, then appropriating their women. A ritualistic mark of bravery for Carib warriors was cannibalism, and it’s for this that history most remembers the Indians who invented the hammock and gave their name to the Caribbean. In fact, their staple diet usually consisted of fish, crabs, conch, and birds. Enter Europe On his second voyage to what he evidently thought were the islands of the Far East, Christopher Columbus first discovered Dominica in 1493. Then he stopped at Marie-Galante, which he named after one of his vessels, before crossing over to the large neighboring island. This he called Guadeloupe after a monastery in Spain. The Caribs here, expert with bow and arrow, were demonstrably displeased to see the explorer. But he stayed long enough to see his first parrots and to marvel at the fact that the Indians spoke three languages — one strictly between the warriors, another for the mostly Arawak women, and a third for ordinary communication between men and women. Sailing north to find and claim islands for the Spanish crown, Columbus named one Saint-Barthélemy after his brother and another Saint-Martin, probably after the saint on whose feast day he had spotted it. Not until his fourth transatlantic journey in 1502 did Columbus reach Martinique. Spain in the 16th century wasn’t very excited about the Lesser Antilles. The big prize was gold, particularly in South America, so for a while Madrid regarded the Caribbean chain as “islands of Peru” where the galleons could stop for fresh water. Two rather half-hearted Spanish attempts to establish footholds on Guadeloupe were repulsed by the Caribs. But as the years went by, the conquistadors rounded up even more Indians to work in gold mines elsewhere. They also introduced sugarcane, some European vegetables, and the pig to the islands, but never founded any significant settlements. That situation, plus the gradual decline of Spanish naval power, proved very tempting to others. Cardinal Richelieu (the powerful 17th-century French statesman) for one dreamed of conquest in the New World. At his bidding, French buccaneers and adventurers, some of them noblemen, started planting the flag on Caribbean real estate in 1625. At first they shared a base with Englishmen on St. Kitts (then called Saint-Christophe). Their leader was the Norman gentleman Pierre Belain d’Esnambuc, whose statue you can see in the main square of Fort-de-France. Some years later, French colonizers moved south to both Guadeloupe and Martinique. Lienard de l’Olive and Jean Duplessis d’Ossonville put ashore at Pointe-Allegre in northern Guadeloupe on 28 June 1635. But it took until 1640 for the French settlers to prevail against the Caribs, who were fighting to retain the island they loved. In September 1635, d’Esnambuc led a party to Martinique and constructed Fort Saint-Pierre, where a town of that name stands today. Here too, the Caribs resisted savagely, with the result that for some 20 years they were left the eastern section of the island. It wasn’t all warfare — the Indians taught the settlers fishing and weaving techniques still in use today. Finally, the Caribs were expelled from the French domain, remaining for a period on Dominica and St. Vincent. In 1648, the French staked claim to their part of Saint-Martin and to nearby Saint-Barthélemy. Sugar and Slaves Sugar cropping, destined to change the face and fate of the Caribbean, began booming as early as the 1640s. To work plantations on the French islands as well as those belonging to other European nations, slaves were shipped in from Africa. The traffic soared incredibly: by 1745 Martinique had 60,000 slaves and only 16,000 whites, while Guadeloupe had even more slaves and fewer whites. Some of the slaves were able to gain freedom in return for special services rendered. The children of colons and slaves were free citizens. By 1674, when Louis XIV took formal control of the islands from the debt-ridden commercial administrators, Martinique had become France’s colonial capital in the Lesser Antilles. Royal rule was to last for more than a century, with West Indian sugar helping to catapult France to economic supremacy in Europe. Britain versus France This was the period when nautical marauders variously called buccaneers, corsairs, privateers, and pirates stalked the shipways and bays of the Caribbean. For undermanned Guadeloupe and Martinique, the French pirates were critically important: in return for a safe haven, they carried in supplies, raided enemy merchant vessels, and joined battles against invading forces. France’s enemy number one in the Caribbean, as elsewhere, was the British. The first naval attacks by the redcoats were against Guadeloupe in 1691 and 1703. Half a century of fighting followed, with blockades, slave-raiding forays against the major islands, and three short seizures of Saint-Martin. During the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), the British conquered Guadeloupe and held it for four years. Ironically, the British occupation gave Guadeloupe’s economy a big boost: between 20,000 and 30,000 more slaves were transported in and new cane-grinding windmills built, all of which spurred the sugar trade to unprecedented prosperity. British engineers also set a port in operation at Pointe-à-Pitre, thus establishing the importance of this advantageously located town. If there was any doubt that sugar was king in those days, the Treaty of Paris (1763) dispelled it: France elected to take back her little West Indian islands and leave the “few snowy acres” of Canada to the British. During the American War of Independence, France’s sympathies were undisguised: American ships were granted safe anchorage in the FWI, privateers raiding from Saint-Barthélemy’s coves sank many a British merchantman, and a Martinique regiment fought the British at Savannah, Georgia. On 12 April 1782, in the sea channel near Guadeloupe’s little off-shore islands of Les Saintes, a British fleet gained historic revenge against French Admiral de Grasse, of Yorktown fame, in a battle that is still talked about today. De Grasse’s fleet of 34 warships was escorting a convoy of 150 cargo vessels to Santo Domingo (today’s Dominican Republic and Haiti) planning to join a Spanish naval venture against Britain’s base on Jamaica. British Admiral Rodney, with 37 ships and a crucial superiority in cannon (3,012 to 2,246 French), struck off Les Saintes. As the islanders watched from their hills, the more mobile British mercilessly chopped up the French convoy until finally de Grasse surrendered. This disastrous French naval defeat is known as the Battle of Les Saintes. Slavery Declines When, during the French Revolution, the Convention ambitiously declared slavery abolished, Martinique’s wealthy plantation owners frantically objected. Opting, as a dubious second best, for eight years of British occupation in 1794, the island managed to retain slavery and avoid the revolutionary terror that Guadeloupe underwent. After Britain seized Guadeloupe, Victor Hugues, commissaire of the Convention, wrenched the island back, proclaimed slavery abolished, and set about guillotining the old-guard colons. His corsairs became the scourge of the sea, the indiscriminate attacks leading to a diplomatic blow-up with the new American government. Hugues’ reign on Guadeloupe didn’t last long, but it was bloodthirsty enough to be recalled vividly even today. In 1802 France reclaimed Martinique from Britain through the Treaty of Amiens. Bonaparte, as First Consul of France, reinstated slavery in the FWI, and historians still argue over the role played in that decision by his Creole wife Josephine, a native of Martinique (see page 55). Sugarcane was revered by the planters and government conservatives as “white gold” (l’or blanc) for the immense wealth it brought. But in 1799 doom was signaled for the cane monopoly with the appearance of the cheaper sugar beet. The end also became inevitable for the slave system upon which the sugar industry was based: the example of Santo Domingo’s slave revolt, which led to the independence of a new republic named Haiti, was electrifying, causing an entirely new attitude to the whole problem of the slave trade. Liberal ideas began mushrooming in France itself, and after Nelson destroyed Napoleon’s fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, the French West Indian planters’ lifeline with France was all but destroyed as well. In addition, the Congress of Vienna formally banned the trade in slaves. Abolition and Beyond The stage was now set for the French West Indies’ greatest hero, Victor Schoelcher. The son of a Parisian porcelain merchant, Schoelcher was inspired to wage a 15-year struggle to free the slaves by what he saw on three trips to the Caribbean. When the Republic was proclaimed in Paris in 1848, Schoelcher drafted the emancipation decree that freed 87,500 slaves in Guadeloupe and 72,000 in Martinique. Today the smallest hamlets on both islands honor Schoelcher with busts, full statues, and street names. Martinique has a town named after him. No slaves meant almost no sugar production, until the first of some 80,000 Hindus from India and 16,000 free Africans began arriving as contract workers for Guadeloupe and Martinique plantations. Many Indians remained and established small farms in the FWI, their descendants becoming an important and colorful segment of the population (see box, page 42). To help stimulate the economy, the islands were finally relieved of the long-standing and controversial requirement that, as colonial appendages of France, they could trade only with the French and usually only in French ships. Rum now began bringing in considerable legal (as opposed to contraband) revenue. In 1871 under the Third Republic, Martinique and Guadeloupe were granted representation in the National Assembly in Paris, which they have retained ever since. Gradually, metropolitan institutions and the benefits of French citizenship were extended to the FWI. In 1877, France bought back Saint-Barthélemy from Sweden for 320,000 gold francs (Louis XVI having ceded the little island 93 years earlier to his friend King Gustav III in return for duty-free trading rights in Gothenburg). The 20th Century The FWI’s worst modern tragedy came in 1902 when the sophisticated city of Saint-Pierre was totally destroyed by the eruption of Mount Pelée. The victims — over 30,000 — included most of Martinique’s social and managerial elite. Henceforth Fort-de-France would be the island’s only significant center and the largest city in the French Antilles. When France fell in World War II, the FWI’s administrator, Admiral Georges Robert, decreed allegiance to the Vichy regime, although most of the islanders were against the move. Fearing German occupation and submarine use of the islands, the Allies imposed a painful blockade and threatened to use military force. In 1943 Robert resigned and the islands swung immediately to de Gaulle’s Free French. With the war monopolizing shipping, the FWI suffered great economic privation. Guadeloupe and Martinique became full départements of France in 1946 — a source of great pride to many. More importantly, it meant much needed, larger financial contributions from Paris. The smaller islands, French Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy, are administrative sub-prefectures (sous-préfectures) of Guadeloupe. While sugar, rum, and banana exports resumed to a degree after the war, the islands’ economies have not kept satisfactory pace with their burgeoning populations. The recent surge of tourism has helped, but not enough. Unrest and some political extremism have surfaced from time to time, but since aid from France is so vital, and French customs so ingrained, it seems almost inconceivable that the FWI will seek total independence as other Caribbean islands have done.