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.
