Martinique, an island in the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean Sea, that was occupied first by Arawaks, then by Caribs. The first European to encounter the island was Christopher Columbus in 1493, but Spaniards ignored the island as other parts of the New World were of greater interest to them. In 1635, Cardinal Richelieu authorized Pierre Bélain d’Esnambuc with about 100 French settlers from Saint Cristophe to occupy and govern Martinique on behalf of the French crown. In 1685, in France Jean-Baptiste Colbert promulgated the “Code des Noires” (Code concerning the Blacks), whose 60 articles would regulate slavery in the colonies. The code forbade some cruel acts, but institutionalized others and slavery itself, relegating the status of enslaved Africans to that of chattel. Britain captured the island during the Seven Years’ War, holding it from 1762 to 1763. Following Britain’s victory in the war there was a strong chance it would annex the island. However, the sugar trade made it so valuable to the royal French government that at the Treaty of Paris (1763), which ended the Seven Years’ War, they gave up all of Canada in order to regain Martinique as well as the neighboring island of Guadeloupe.

In 1766, there were some 450 sugar mills in Martinique, and molasses was a major export. August 2, 1766 saw the birth of Saint-Pierre de Louis Delgrès, a mixed-race free black who would serve in the French army. In 1794 the French Convention abolished slavery. However, before the decree could be implemented in Martinique, a British force under Admiral Sir John Jervis and Lt. General Sir Charles Grey attacked the island and captured it. Royalists regained possession of their properties and positions, the enslaved were returned to their masters, and emancipation was forbidden. The government also promulgated an ordinance banning all gatherings of blacks or meetings by slaves, and banned Carnival. However, the British did require an oath of allegiance to the King of England.

Six years later, in 1800, Jean Kina, an ex-slave from Dominica and aide-de-camp to a British officer, fled to Morne Lemaître and called on free blacks and slaves to join him in a rebellion in support of the rights of the free blacks. A number did so, leading Kina to occupy his position for over a year. When he marched on Port Royal though, a British force took over the position and negotiated his surrender in return for amnesty. The British transported Kina to England, where they held him in Newgate Prison. In 1801, Delgrès along with black officers, rebelled against the Gen.-Capt. Lacrosse because his racist actions. But Napoleon sent Gen. Richepance to put down the resistance in Guadeloupe and to restore slavery to it and Martinique. French troops cornered the rebels and they died by their own hands rather in an explosion in Matouba on May 28, 1802.

In 1802, the British returned the island to the French with the Treaty of Amiens. When France regained control of Martinique, Napoléon Bonaparte reinstated slavery. The British again captured Martinique in 1809, and held it until 1814. During Napoleon’s 100 Days in 1815, he abolished the slave trade. At the same time the British briefly re-occupied Martinique. 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. A slave insurrection in 1822 resulted in two dead and seven injured. The government condemned 19 slaves to death, 10 to the galleys, six to whipping, and eight to helping with the executions.

In February 1848, François Auguste Perrinon became head of the Committee of Colonists of Martinique. He was a member of the Commission for the abolition of slavery, led by Victor Schoelcher. On April 27, Schoelcher obtained a decree abolishing slavery in the French Empire. Perrinon was appointed Commissioner General of Martinique, and charged with the task of abolishing slavery there. However, he and the decree did not arrive in Martinique until June 3, by which time Governor Claude Rostoland had already abolished slavery. The imprisonment of an enslaved African at Le Prêcheur had led to a slave revolt on May 20; two days later Rostoland, under duress, had abolished slavery on the island to quell the revolt. Indentured laborers from India started to arrive in Martinique in 1853. Plantation owners recruited the Indians to replace the slaves, who once free, had fled the plantations. This led to the creation of the small but continuing Indian community in Martinique. This immigration repeated on a smaller scale the importation of Indians to such British colonies as British Guiana and Trinidad and Tobago following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833. Towards the end of the century, 1000 Chinese also came as earlier they had come to Cuba.

In 1946, the French National Assembly voted unanimously to transform the colony into an overseas department. As part of France, Martinique is part of the European Union, and its currency is the Euro. The inhabitants of Martinique are French citizens with full political and legal rights. Martinique sends four deputies to the French National Assembly and two senators to the Senate.

The economy of Martinique is based on trade. Agriculture accounts for about 6% of GDP and the small industrial sector for 11%. Sugar production has declined, with most of the sugarcane now used for the production of rum. Banana exports are increasing, going mostly to France. The bulk of meat, vegetable, and grain requirements must be imported, contributing to a chronic trade deficit that requires large annual transfers of aid from France. Tourism has become more important than agricultural exports as a source of foreign exchange. The majority of the work force is employed in the service sector and in administration.

Most of Martinique’s population is descended from enslaved Africans brought to work on sugar plantations during the colonial era, generally mixed with some French, Amerindian (Carib people), Indian (Tamil), Lebanese or Chinese ancestry. Between 5 and 10% of the population is of Indian (Tamil) origin. The island also boasts a small Syro–Lebanese community, a small but increasing Chinese community, and the Béké community (descendants of European ethnic groups of the first French and British settlers which totals around 5,000 people in the island, most of them of aristocratic origin by birth or after buying the title), who still dominate parts of the agricultural and trade sectors of the economy. Whites represent 5% of the population. Its official language is French, although many of its inhabitants also speak Antillean Creole (Créole Martiniquais).

Population:436,131 (July 2006 est.). There are an estimated 260,000 people of Martiniquan origin living in mainland France, most of them in the Paris region.

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Glissant left Martinique in 1946 for Paris, where he received his PhD, having studied ethnography at the Musée de l’Homme and History and philosophy at the Sorbonne. He established, with Paul Niger, the separatist Front Antillo-Guyanais pour l’Autonomie party in 1959, as a result of which Charles de Gaulle barred him from leaving France between 1961 and 1965. He returned to Martinique in 1965 and founded the Institut martiniquais d’études, as well as Acoma, a social sciences publication. Glissant divided his time between Martinique, Paris and New York; since 1995, he was Distinguished Professor of French at the CUNY Graduate Center. In January 2006, Édouard Glissant was asked by Jacques Chirac to take on the presidency of a new cultural centre devoted to the history of slave trade.

Shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in 1992, when Derek Walcott emerged as the recipient, Glissant was the pre-eminent critic of the Négritude school of Caribbean writing and father-figure for the subsequent Créolité group of writers which includes Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant. While his first novel portrays the political climate in 1940s Martinique, through the story of a group of young revolutionaries, his subsequent work focuses on questions of language, identity, space and history. Glissant’s development of the notion of antillanité seeks to root Caribbean identity firmly within “the Other America” and springs from a critique of identity in previous schools of writing, specifically the work of Aimé Césaire, which looked to Africa for its principal source of identification. He is notable for his attempt to trace parallels between the history and culture of the Creole Caribbean and those of Latin America and the plantation culture of the American south, most obviously in his study of William Faulkner. Generally speaking, his thinking seeks to interrogate notions of centre, origin and linearity, embodied in his distinction between atavistic and composite cultures, which has influenced subsequent Martinican writers’ trumpeting of hybridity as the bedrock of Caribbean identity and their “creolised” approach to textuality. As such he is both a key (though underrated) figure in postcolonial literature and criticism, but also he often pointed out that he was close to two French philosophers, Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, and their theory of the rhizome.

Glissant died in Paris, France at the age of 82.

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