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Marie-Galante
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Marie-Galante is an island of the Caribbean Sea located in the Guadeloupean archipelago. Marie-Galante is constitutionally part of France, as Guadeloupe is an overseas région and département.
The island of Marie-Galante has a land area of 158 km² (61 sq. miles), and a population of 12,009 inhabitants at the 2006 census (down from 16,341 inhabitants at the 1961 census).
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Encyclopedia
Marie-Galante is an island of the Caribbean Sea located in the Guadeloupean archipelago. Marie-Galante is constitutionally part of France, as Guadeloupe is an overseas région and département.
The island of Marie-Galante has a land area of 158 km² (61 sq. miles), and a population of 12,009 inhabitants at the 2006 census (down from 16,341 inhabitants at the 1961 census). The population density in 2006 was 76 inh. per km².
Administration
Marie-Galante is divided in three communes: Grand-Bourg (5,707 inhabitants), Capesterre-de-Marie-Galante (3,469 inhabitants), and Saint-Louis (2,833 inhabitants).
The three communes of Marie-Galante have formed an intercommunal entity in 1994: the Community of Communes of Marie-Galante (French: Communauté de communes de Marie-Galante). This is the oldest intercommunal structure in overseas France.
History
The Huecoides is the oldest known civilization to have occupied Marie Galante. The Arawak tribe followed them. Then around AD 850 the Carib Indians arrived. Among the islands of the Guadeloupe archipelago, Marie Galante was the first one reached by Christopher Columbus during his second voyage. He arrived at the place called Anse Ballet in Grand-Bourg on November 3, 1493. He named the island after his flagship, Maria Galanda. It was previously called "Aichi" by the Carib Indians and "Touloukaera" by the Arawaks.
On November 8, 1648, Governor Houel organized the settlement of the first French colonists, they were about fifty men near the site of Vieux-Fort in Saint Louis. Jacques de Boisseret bought the island back from the French Company of the Islands of America on September 4, 1649. In 1653 the Carib Indians slaughtered the few remaining colonists, who had not given into the harsh living conditions, as reprisal for rapes committed on the island of Dominica by sailors on a barge coming from Martinique.
Sugar cane most probably originated from India had been imported to the French West Indies by Christopher Columbus. In light of its industrialization, it was cultivated in Guadeloupe in the beginning of 1654 thanks to deported Brazilian colonists who incited the creation of the first sugar plantations equipped with small oxen-powered mills to crush the cane.
In 1660, at Basse-Terre Chateau, a peace treaty was signed between the Carib Indians and the French and British who authorized them to settle on the islands of Dominica and Saint Vincent. The Island was now at peace leaving way for human and technological means to unite developing the economic market based on plantations as the center of production and labor by imported African slaves.
In 1664, Madame de Boisseret gave up her rights to Marie-Galante to the Company of the West Indies, and the Island then had its first four (oxen-powered) mills. In 1665, her son, Monsieur de Boisseret de Temericourt became governor. The map of the island he established carries his coat of arms. The Island was plundered by both the Dutch in 1676, and by the British in 1690 and 1691. These radings, which gave way to the destruction of the mills, the refineries and the depopulation of the Island, caused the governor general of Martinique to forbid the repopulation of the Island until 1696. The British took over the Island again from 1759 to 1763.
Windmills were first seen in 1780. By 1830, 105 mills existed, half of which were still oxen drawn. Today 72 mill towers are still standing. From November 1792 to 1794 Marie Galante, which was Republican, separated itself from the royalist government of Guadeloupe. Slavery which was first abolished in 1794, reinstated in 1802, and finally came to an end in 1848 thanks to the combined efforts of abolitionists, such as Victor Schoelcher, and the never ending revolts of the Negro slaves.
The legislative elections of June 24 and June 25, 1849, the first time the emancipated slaves voted, it was marred by a bloody repression of protesting groups, from the majority of the population, against the ballot rigging orchestrated by wealthy white plantation owners. Many blacks were killed during these uprisings which lead to the dumping of rum and sugar from the Pirogue plantation into the nearby pond. Today this pond is known as "la mare au punch" (Punch pond) in memory of these tragic events.
The Guadeloupe archipelago is made up principally of the islands of Grande-Terre, Basse-Terre, Marie-Galante, Saint-Martin, Saint-Barthelemy, Terre de Haut, Terre de Bas and Desirade. It is an overseas French department since 1946 and a single-department region since 1982. (In 2007 Saint Barthelemy and the French part of Saint Martin both became separate administrative units, however it is expected that until 2012 they will be represented in the French Parliament by Guadeloupe.) The three administrative counties of Marie Galante are Capesterre, Grand-Bourg and Saint Louis, constituted a county community (Communeauté des Communes) on January 8, 1994, the first one to be created in a French Overseas department.
Geography
With an area of 158.01 km² (61.01 sq mi), the island is comprised of three communes with a combined 1999 census population of 12,488 inhabitants. The island is more commonly known as "La grande galette" (Big Pancake) due to its round shape and almost flat surface (its highest peak, the hill Morne Constant, rises to 670 ft). Once counting over 106 sugar mills, it is also called the "Island of a hundred windmills", or the "Grande dependence" (the biggest island depending on Guadeloupe). The island is undulating substrate calcareous, sprinkled by the trade wind but such a subjected to the cyclones and the earthquakes.
The northern coast is characterized by a high cliff. A fault called the Bar separates the northern quarter from the remainder of the island. To the west beaches and mangroves extend along the Caribbean Sea. The rivers of Saint-Louis and the Vieux-Fort run out there after having crossed the insular plate since the heart of Marie-Galante. In the east and the south, the plate becomes dull to rock inclined towards a littoral plain. This one skirts the Atlantic from which it is protected by a coral barrier.
Economy
The colonial economy developed on the island the cultures of tobacco, indigo, coffee and cotton. But as of the 17th century, sugar cane became a very important source of income. It was maintained into the 19th century and 20th century, adapting to the abolition of slavery and the great sugar crisis.
During the dominance of the sugar cane industry, Marie-Gallant acquired the nickname "the island with a hundred mills". In 1818 there were a little more than one hundred mills to process sugar cane. The cane juice was transformed into sugar or rum. The mills were originally powered by oxen, followed by windmills since 1780, and then steam powered mills since 1883.
The 19th century saw disappearing the economic organization from Ancien Régime. Gradually, all the small sugar refineries were restructured in sugar factories. In 1885, five sites gathered the activity. In 1931, 18 sugar distilleries and four factories were in production. The large plantations made place with small farms, organized to the 20th century around co-operatives. But agriculture is subjected in all the French West Indies to a strong international competition. At the beginning of the 21st century, one sugar refinery (factory of Large Handle) and three distilleries (Bellevue, Rod, Poisson) remain with Marie-Gallant. The agricultural white rum which is produced there is the subject of a label of origin. The biological sugar production could also be a new axis of development, but the current context of stop of the European subsidies makes dubious the future agricultural and thus economic of Marie-Gallant and its inhabitants.
Old economy, one can still see many vestiges. This historical richness is development: some 70 turns including two restored mills (Mill of Bézard), colonial dwellings and old sugar refineries (Murat Dwelling). A network of paths makes it possible to the hikers to discover the island and its population.
Thus Marie-Gallant she in her turn knows, like the other islands of Guadeloupe, the economic change which the tourist activity allows. But the development of these services is based here on a policy of nature conservation and inheritance, whether it is precolombian, colonial or contemporary. Also, Marie Galante Airport is located on Pointe des Basses, halfway between Grand-Bourg and Capesterre.
Demography
Marie-Galante counted 30,000 inhabitants in 1946. Strongly marked by the massive exodus of its young people towards the main islands of Guadeloupe and mainland France, the island did not count any more than 12,009 inhabitants in the 2006 census. This fall of the population is related to the slow anguish of the sugar economy for this period. The population density in 2006 was 76 persons per km².
Famous Marie-Galantais
- Constant of Aubigné, (1585–1647), was the governor, of Marie-Galante. His/her daughter Francoise d' Aubigné accompanied it. Several years afterwards, it was going to become Madam de Maintenon but, of its stay in the Antilles, will remain to him the nickname of Beautiful Indian.
- Charles-François Bonneville, (1803–?), was a mayor and adviser general of Grand-Bourg of 1854 to 1860. Also president of the Room of Agriculture, he is the craftsman of the revival of the culture of cotton long silk which he tries out on the Thibault dwelling.
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