Martinique - History

History

The island was occupied first by Arawaks, then by Caribs. It was charted by Columbus in 1493, but Spain had little interest in the territory.

On 15 September 1635, Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc, French governor of the island of St. Kitts, landed in the harbor of St. Pierre with 150 French settlers after being driven off St. Kitts by the English. D'Esnambuc claimed Martinique for French King Louis XIII and the French "Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique" (Company of the American Islands), and established the first European settlement at Fort Saint-Pierre (now St. Pierre).

In 1636, the indigenous Carib Indians rose against the settlers to drive them off the island in the first of many skirmishes. The French successfully repelled the natives and forced them to retreat to the eastern part of the island, on the Caravella Peninisula in the Cabesterre. Ongoing skirmishes with the French settlers resulted in the French crown sending in 600 French troops in 1657 to completely eradicate the Caribs from the island. The Caribs who survived the holocaust withdrew in 1658 to the islands of St. Vincent and Dominica.

Because there were few Catholic priests in the French Antilles, many of the earliest French settlers were Huguenots who sought greater religious freedom than what they could experience in mainland France. They were quite industrious and became quite prosperous. Although edicts from King Louis XIV's court regularly came to the islands to suppress the Protestant "heretics", these were mostly ignored by island authorities until Louis XIV's Edict of Revocation in 1685.

From September 1686 to early 1688, the French crown used Martinique as a threat and a dumping ground for mainland Huguenots who refused to reconvert to Catholicism. Over 1,000 Huguenots were transported to Martinique during this period, usually under miserable and crowded ship conditions that caused many of them to die en route. Those that survived the trip were distributed to the island planters as "Engagés" (Indentured servants) under the system of serf peonage that prevailed in the French Antilles at the time.

As many of the planters on Martinique were themselves Huguenot, and who were sharing in the suffering under the harsh strictures of the Revocation, they began plotting to emigrate from Martinique with many of their recently-arrived brethren. Many of them were encouraged by their Catholic brethren who looked forward to the departure of the heretics and seizing their property for themselves. By 1688, nearly all of Martinique's French Protestant population had escaped to the British American colonies or Protestant countries back home. The policy decimated the population of Martinique and the rest of the French Antilles and set back their colonization by decades, causing the French king to relax his policies in the islands yet leaving the islands susceptible to British occupation over the next century.

In 1685, Louis XIV signed into law the Code Noir (Black Code), which regulated slavery in the French colonies. The law, originally conceived by French Finance Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert prior to his death in 1683, was finalized by his son the Marquis de Seignelay and presented to the King for his signature in 1685. The law limited the rights of slave-holders, ensured that freed blacks held the same rights as other Frenchmen in the islands, and required that all slaves be baptised as Catholics. The law also ordered the expulsion of the Jews from all the French Caribbean islands. These Jews then moved to the Dutch island of Curaçao.

Despite several brief interludes of British occupation, including once during the Seven Years' War and twice during the Napoleonic Wars, Martinique has remained a French possession.

In 1946, the French National Assembly voted unanimously to transform the colony into an overseas department.