History of Martinique

The company contracted with Messrs l'Olive and Duplessis to occupy and govern on its behalf the Caribbean islands belonging to the French crown.

This led on September 1, 1635, to Pierre Bélain d'Esnambuc landing on Martinique with eighty to one hundred French settlers from Saint Cristophe.

French and foreign merchants frequently came to the island to buy these exotic products, transforming Martinique into a modestly prosperous colony.

They systematically killed the fiercely resisting Caribs as they expanded, forcing the survivors back to the Caravelle Peninsula in the Cabesterre (the eastern side of the island).

In 1685, King Louis XIV proclaimed "Le Code Noir", which aimed to provide a legal framework for the removal of Africans from their homeland and their transport to work as slaves on the French sugar plantations.

Ever since, a strong theme of Martinican culture has been creolization or interaction between the French colonial settlers, known locally as békés, and the Africans they imported.

Still, under the directorship of du Parquet, Martinique's economy developed as it exported products to France and the neighboring English and Dutch colonies.

In 1650 Father Jacques du Tetre built a still for converting the waste from the sugarcane mills into molasses, which became a major export industry.

In 1654, du Parquet allowed 250 Dutch Jews, who were fleeing Brazil following the Portuguese taking back their territory in that colony, to settle Martinique, where they engaged in the sugar trade.

The next year, the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales decided to establish a town at Fort Royal, even though the location was a malarial swamp.

In 1692, Charles de La Roche-Courbon, Count of Blénac, the Governor and Lieutenant General of the French colonies in America, named Fort Royal as the capital city of Martinique.

In 1720, a French naval officer, Gabriel de Clieu, procured a coffee plant seedling from the Royal Botanical Gardens in Paris and transported it to Martinique.

During the British occupation, Marie Josèph Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, the future Empress Joséphine was born to a noble family living on Les Trois-Îlets across the bay from Fort Royal.

August 2, 1766 saw the birth of Saint-Pierre de Louis Delgrès, a mixed-race free black who would serve in the French army and fight the British in 1794, before becoming the leader of the unsuccessful resistance in Guadeloupe against General Richepance, whom Napoleon had sent to restore slavery to that colony.

[7] Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry, the deputy to the National Constituent Assembly for Martinique opposed representation for Free people of color.

On 4 February 1793, Louis-Francois Dubuc signed an accord in Whitehall, London, putting Martinique under British jurisdiction until the French Monarchy could be re-established.

On 30 March 1794, the British occupation reinstated the ancien regime, including the French Monarchy's Supreme Council and the seneschal's courts of Trinité, Le Marin, and St Pierre.

When Kina's small force marched on Fort-Royal, British troops quickly responded and negotiated his surrender in return for amnesty.

The British, who had abolished the slave trade in their empire in 1807, forced Napoleon's successor, Louis XVIII to retain the proscription, though it did not become truly effective until 1831.

In 1839, an earthquake believed to have measured 6.5 on the Richter magnitude scale killed some 400 to 700 people, caused severe damage in Saint Pierre, and almost totally destroyed Fort Royal.

In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, rising racial tensions led to the short-lived insurrection in southern Martinique and proclamation in Fort-de-France of a Martiniquan Republic.

In 1887, after visiting Panama, Paul Gauguin spent some months with his friend Charles Laval, also a painter, in a cabin some two kilometers south of Saint Pierre.

Two years later, in Fort de France, the municipal council approved the Mayor's proposal to redevelop the slum district of Terres Sainvilles as a "workers city".

In 1931, the Martiniquan Aimé Césaire moved to Paris to attend the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, the École Normale Supérieure, and finally the Sorbonne.

In 1933, André Aliker, the editor of Justice, the Communist newspaper, documented that a M. Aubéry, the wealthy, white owner of the Lareinty Company, had bribed the judges of the Court of Appeal to dismiss charges of tax fraud against him.

That same year, Félix Eboué became the Acting Governor of the island, and an American, Frank Perret, established Le Musée Volcanologique at Saint Pierre.

In 1939, the French cruiser Jeanne d'Arc arrived late in the year with Admiral Georges Robert, High Commissioner of the Republic to the Antilles and Guiana.

The island was blockaded by the Royal Navy and the British used the gold as collateral for Lend-Lease facilities from the US, on the basis it could be "acquired" at any time if needed.

The essence of the plot is the conversion from neutrality to the Free French side of an American fishing boat captain operating out of Vichy-controlled Fort de France in 1940.

In 1945, Aimé Césaire succeeded in getting elected Mayor of Fort de France and Deputy from Martinique to the French National Assembly as a member of the Communist Party.