TOURISM
villa adress: 97223 DIAMANT
French West Indies
TOURISM
villa adress: 97223 DIAMANT
French West Indies
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GEOGRAPHY To the south of Guadeloupe, between the islands
of Dominica and Santa Lucia, lie the 1100 km² that make up Martinique.
This island may be divided into two general regions:
- The windward coast faces the Atlantic Ocean
to the north-cast. On this coast waves and rainfall are more plentiful
than elsewhere on the island, and the towns of Grand Rivière,
Le Lorrain, Le Robert, Le François, and Le Vauclin, as well
as the Caravelle peninsula are found here.
- The leeward coast, facing the Caribbean Sea
to the south-west, has a milder climate. The towns of Saint-Pierre,
Case-Pilote, Trois-Ilets, Le Diamant and the famous " Rocher du Diamant
", Sainte-Luce, Sainte-Anne, and the capital Fort-de-France are located
on this coast.
The island is approximately 65 km long and 30
km wide. The highest point on the island is Mont Pelée, which
rises to 1400 meters.
At 14°50’ north latitude (about the same
as Manila and Dakar) and 61° longitude, Martinique is located
almost at the center of the string of islands, which make up the smaller
"Antilles", which stretch 850 km from the Virgin Islands in the north
to Grenada in the south.
Martinique is 7 000 km from Paris, 3 500
from New York, 700 from Venezuela and 120 from Guadeloupe.
HISTORY
As throughout the Antilles, traces of the first
inhabitants of Martinique date from approximately 4 000 BC. This
people called the Arawaks, who were originally from the Orinoco
river valley in present day Venezuela, wandered until about the
year 700 AD. They eventually came to be known as the Taïnos,
a civilization with a very developed social structure. Several decades
before the arrival of the first Europeans this civilization was
completely decimated by the "Caribbean Indians." From South America
as were the Arawaks; these fearsome cannibal warriors eliminated
their predecessors throughout the Antilles within several years
of their arrival.
It was on the15th of June 1502, Saint Martin’s
day, that Christopher Columbus, embarked on his fourth trip to discover
a passage to India, landed in Martinique. However, the island remained
for a long time controlled by the natives. Not until 1626, following
the creation by Richelieu of the American Islands Trading Company,
did Liénard de L’Olive, then Belain d’Esnambuc, establish
the first French contact with the island known as the « Pearl
of the Antilles ». The conquest of new territories in the
region led to the eventual extermination of the native Caribbean
Indians.
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Du Parquet, who governed the territory in the name of the Trading Company, bought Martinique for himself in 1650. It was from that period on that the trade in black Africans began to develop and be institutionalized. In 1685 Colbert’s "Black Code" defined what, according to him, were supposed to be the « correct rules for and uses of slavery ». In 1674, under Louis XIV, Martinique became a French colony.
Taken by the English in 1759, the island was returned to the French in 1763, traded for territory in Canada according to the Terms of the Treaty of Paris.
During the French Revolution loyalist and republican clans opposed each other in Martinique. In 1791 Count de Béhague succeeded in subduing the island and raising the monarchist « Fleur-de-Lis » flag over the only royalist territory in the whole of the new French Republic.
The effect of these events was to inflame the tensions between the white « békés » and the mulattos who were allied with freed blacks seeking equal rights. In1793, the French Convention government declared the abolition of slavery, and Count de Béhague fled upon the arrival of the new governor Rochambeau. The abolition of slavery was not, however, ever applied because the royalists allied themselves with the English who retook the island and controlled it until 1802. It changed hands several more times before being definitively returned to France in 1815 by the Treaty of Vienna.
Slavery was « definitively » abolished on March 4th 1848 although in that same year, as well as in 1859, more than 10,000 African « immigration volunteers » were imported. The abolition of slavery did not prevent, either, the importing of « coolies » from the East Indian Trading Company.
In 1946 France terminated the colonial status of its possessions in the Antilles, and the Island became a French « département », or state, before becoming a « Région » in 1983.