History

Main article: History of Martinique

Saint-Pierre. Before the total destruction of Saint-Pierre in 1902 by a volcanic eruption, it was the most
important city of Martinique culturally and economically, being known as "the Paris of the Caribbean".

Pre-European contact

The island was occupied first by Arawaks, then by Caribs. The Carib people had migrated from
the mainland to the islands about 1201 CE, according to carbon dating of artifacts. They were
largely displaced, exterminated and assimilated by the Taino, who were resident on the island in
the 1490s.[6]

1493–1688

Martinique 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 the 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). D'Esnambuc died in 1636, leaving
the company and Martinique in the hands of his nephew, Jacques Dyel du Parquet, who in 1637,
became governor of the island.

In 1636, the indigenous Caribs 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 Caravelle Peninsula in the region then known as the Capesterre.
When the Carib revolted against French rule in 1658, the Governor Charles Houël du Petit Pré
retaliated with war against them. Many were killed; those who survived were taken captive and
expelled from the island. Some Carib had fled to Dominica or St. Vincent, where the French
agreed to leave them at peace.
The attack on the French ships at Martinique in 1667

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.[7]