Marie-Galante, Guadeloupe - multiview postcard - c.1970s

• Postcard

   

• Picture / Image:  Marie-Galante [Guadeloupe]
• Publisher: Scandinexim Ltd
• Postally used: no - has message
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Marie-Galante is an island of the Caribbean Sea located south of Guadeloupe and north of Dominica. It is a dependency of Guadeloupe, which is an overseas department and an overseas region of France.

Marie-Galante has a land area of 170.5 km² (61 sq. miles). It had 11,528 inhabitants at the start of 2013, with a population density of 67.6 people per km².

The Huecoids are the oldest known civilizations to have occupied Marie-Galante, followed by Arawaks, and then by the Island Caribs circa 850. The island was called Aichi by the Caribs and Touloukaera by the Arawaks.

Marie-Galante was the second island encountered by Christopher Columbus during his second voyage, after Dominica. On 3 November 1493, he anchored at the islet now called Anse Ballet in Grand-Bourg, and named the island in honor of the flagship Marigalante (‘gallant Mary’) of the second voyage.^[1]

On November 8, 1648, Governor Charles Houël du Petit Pré organized the first French colonization of the Americas: about fifty men lived near the site called Vieux Fort "Old Fort". 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 surrendered to the harsh living conditions.

Sugarcane, which probably originated in India, had been imported to the French West Indies by Christopher Columbus. As sugar became a commodity, it was cultivated in Guadeloupe from 1654 by deported Brazilian colonists who created the first sugar plantations equipped with small ox-powered mills to crush the cane.

In 1660, at Basse-Terre Chateau, a peace treaty was signed in which the Caribs authorized the French and British to settle on the islands of Dominica and Saint Vincent. With the island now at peace, the availability of mill technology was developing into a plantation-based economy by using imported slaves from Africa.

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 ox-powered mills. In 1665, her son Monsieur de Boisseret de Temericourt became the island's governor. The map of the island he established carries his coat of arms. During the second half of the 17th century, the first slaves were brought from Africa to Marie-Galante to cultivate plantations. In 1671, 57% of the inhabitants were black. Jewish Dutch exiles from Brazil also settled, bringing new methods for the cultivation of cane sugar.

In 1676, a Dutch fleet abducted the population and plundered its facilities. After the repopulation of the island, its new inhabitants were attacked for the third time by the Dutch and by the British in 1690 and 1691. These raids, which resulted in the destruction of the mills, the refineries and the depopulation of the island, caused the Governor-General of Martinique to forbid the re-population of the island until 1696. The British retook the island from 1759 to 1763.

Windmills were first seen in 1780. By 1830, 105 mills were put in place, half of which were still ox-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 was first abolished in 1794.

The British captured Guadeloupe, and with it Marie-Galante, la Désirade, and all Guadaloupe's dependencies, in April 1794.^[2] The Treaty of Amiens in 1802 restored them to France. With the restoration, slavery too was reinstated in 1802.

In March 1808 the Royal Navy took possession of Marie-Galante to stop French privateers using its port.^[3] In August a small French force attempted to recapture the island but the British garrison, consisting of Royal Marines, augmented by Sir Alexander Cochrane's first Colonial Marines, newly recruited from escaped slaves of the island, and by some troops from the 1st West India Regiment, defeated and captured the French.^[4] The British returned the island to France in 1815.

Slavery finally came to an end in 1848, thanks to the combined efforts of abolitionists, such as Victor Schœlcher, and repeated slave revolts.

The legislative elections of June 24 and June 25, 1849, the first time former slaves were permitted to vote, were inflicted by the bloody violence of protesters which have risen up out of the black majority in response to ballot-rigging orchestrated by wealthy white plantation owners. Many black people were killed during these uprisings which led to the dumping of rum and sugar from the Pirogue plantation into a nearby pond. Today this pond is known as la mare au punch (‘the Punch Pond’) in memory of these tragic events.

Guadeloupe (Grande-Terre and Basse-Terre), along with its dependencies (Marie-Galante, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy, Îles des Saintes and la Désirade), were an overseas department since 1946 and a single-department overseas region since 1982. Within Marie-Galante the three communes are Capesterre-de-Marie-Galante, Grand-Bourg and Saint-Louis. Together, these were designated as an intercommunal entity on January 8, 1994, the first to be created in an overseas department. In 2007, Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy each became an overseas collectivity, making them politically separate from Guadeloupe.

Steven Callahan, who was lost at sea in a small (5-foot, 6-inch inside diameter) Avon life raft for 76 days, was found alive on April 21, 1982 off the coast of Marie-Galante by local fishermen Paulinus Williams, Jules Paquet and Jean-Louis Paquet, from neighbouring Guadeloupe.

Marie-Galante comprises three communes of France: Grand-Bourg, Capesterre-de-Marie-Galante, and Saint-Louis, Guadeloupe, with a combined 1999 census population of 12,488 inhabitants. The island is more commonly known as la grande galette (‘the Big Biscuit’) due to its round shape and almost flat surface; its highest peak, the Morne Constant Hill, rises to 204 m. Formerly having over 106 sugar mills, it is also called "the Island of a Hundred Windmills" (French: lîle aux cent moulins). It is also nicknamed the Grande dépendance, being the biggest dependency of Guadeloupe. The island is undulating substrate calcareous, cooled by the trade winds and subject to cyclones and earthquakes.

The northern coast is characterized by a high cliff. A fault line 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 through the plateau that sits at the center of Marie-Galante. In the East and the South, the plateau descends sharply to a coastal plain skirting the Atlantic Ocean from which it is protected by a barrier coral reef.