|
Results for Martinique
|
On this page:
|
An island and overseas department of France in the Windward Islands of the West Indies. Inhabited first by Arawaks and later by Caribs, the island was visited by Columbus in 1502. It was colonized by French settlers after 1635. Fort-de-France is the capital. Population: 436,000.
Martinican Mar'ti·ni'can adj. & n.
For more information on Martinique, visit Britannica.com.
Land, People, and Economy
Of volcanic origin, the island is rugged and mountainous, reaching its greatest height in Mt. Pelée. The mainly Roman Catholic population is largely of African or mixed descent. French and a creole patois are spoken.
Most agriculture occurs in the hot valleys and along the coastal strips; a large part of this area is devoted to sugarcane, which was introduced from Brazil in 1654 and which provides one of Martinique's chief exports, rum. Bananas and pineapples are also important agricultural products. The island's industries consist mainly of petroleum refining, sugar and rum production, and pineapple canning. Tourism, which has eclipsed agriculture as a source of foreign exchange, constitutes a major sector of the economy, and the majority of the people work in the service sector or administration.
History
Visited by Columbus, probably in 1502, the island was ignored by the Spanish; colonization began in 1635, when the French, who had promised the native Caribs the western half of the island, established a settlement. The French proceeded to eliminate the Caribs and later imported African slaves as sugar plantation workers. In the 18th cent. Martinique's sugar exports made it one of France's most valuable colonies; although slavery was abolished in 1848, sugar continued to hold a dominant position in the economy. A target of dispute during the Anglo-French worldwide colonial struggles, Martinique was finally confirmed as a French possession after the Napoleonic wars. In 1902 an eruption of Mt. Pelée destroyed the town of St. Pierre.
Martinique supported the Vichy regime after France's collapse in World War II, but in 1943 a U.S. naval blockade forced the island to transfer its allegiance to the Free French. It became a department of France in 1946 and an administrative region in 1974. Although the island has recovered from the extensive damage caused by a hurricane in 1980, France has continued its attempts to improve the economic life of the Martinique, which is plagued by overpopulation and a lack of development.
Psychoanalysis is a relatively recent activity in Martinique. West Indian intellectuals studying in Paris in the 1930s nevertheless showed an early interest in it. Martinican students could thus declare, in the review Légitime defense (Legitimate defense): "As for Freud, we are ready to use the immense machine for dissolving the bourgeois family that he set in motion."
The poetic works of Aimé Césaire began to be published in 1939 and were hailed by André Breton as "The greatest lyrical monument of our time [. . .] a general abdication of the mind." There is a definite influence of a Surrealist version of psychoanalysis on a poetic project that set as one of its major goals the exploration of the depths of the black psyche.
Frantz Fanon, the Martinican psychiatrist, criticized psychoanalysis in 1952. He claimed that Freud, Jung, and Adler had not thought of blacks in their research. Similarly, he saw the Oedipus complex as being impossible in West Indian families. For more than twenty years the complex conflicts surrounding decolonialization in the West Indies were to make Fanon's critique the breeding ground for resistance to psychoanalysis in the name of a cultural determinism with uncertain principles. The few people who took any interest in psychoanalysis had no more than a bookish knowledge of it.
The first psychoanalytically-informed work in Martinique began in 1973: interpreting children's drawings, a seminar directed by the French child psychiatrist Bernard Bousquet. But the true beginning of psychoanalysis in Martinique dates from 1974. It derived from the presence of a Swiss couple, Pierre and Lucette Stittelmann, two non-physician psychoanalysts. Shipwrecked on their way to the Trobriand Islands (Papua New Guinea), they had to land on the island. Their stay was extended until 1980. The Stittelmanns had been trained by and were members of the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society (affiliated with the International Psychoanalytical Association [IPA]). They thus provided analysis, training and supervision for all who wished to become psychoanalysts.
In October 1975 the first psychoanalytic group came into being: the Groupe antillais de recherche, d'étude et de formation psychanalytique (GAREFP; The West Indian Group for Psychoanalytic Research, Study and Training), the founding members being Héliane Bourgeois and Luce Descoueyte, along with Mrs. Marcel Manquant and Mrs. Raymond Saint-Louis Augustin. From 1975 to 1980 this group worked to secure theoretical training of its members with analysts from the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, affiliated to the IPA. Among the members were Florence Guignard, Jean Bégoin, René Diatkine, and Michel Neyraut. There was also an initial collaboration with Roberto Fontaine of Venezuela for transactional analysis. Dr Mauriello, a Martinican psychoanalyst living in Quebec, also contributed to the effort.
Following the trauma occasioned by the departure of the Stittelmanns in 1980, the GAREFP developed a Lacanian orientation that increased with time, some of the founding members having decided to withdraw from the group.
December 1990, saw the birth of another association, the Forum, the founding members being Benedetta Jumpertz, Marcel Manquant, and Guillaume Suréna. It organized the first Martinican symposium on psychoanalysis in March 1991. It organizes training for its own members and is not affiliated with any external psychoanalytic associations. Its members come from various different backgrounds but it sees Freud's work as its cornerstone. In this sense it could be said to identify with the IPA orientation, although it is not a member.
The absence of West Indian doctors and academics is easily noticeable. Twenty-five years after the introduction of psychoanalysis, there were only two Martinican psychiatrists practicing psychoanalysis there and the two existing associations had been founded by non-physicians. Psychoanalysis has no direct influence on either the medical or the academic world. The paramedical and in the psycho-educational sectors have displayed a certain amount of interest.
As of 2005, psychoanalysis does not yet play any significant role in West Indian culture. It is not present in questions of national identity, literary debates, or political aspirations. Martinican psychoanalysis has not yet created distribution networks. A very small number of individuals have written clinical and theoretical papers but there has been no substantial contribution to psychoanalytic theory.
This psychoanalysis is evolving in isolation in relation to the Caribbean, like Martinique itself. There are a few practitioners in Guadeloupe, but no organized movement. Our ignorance of what is happening in English-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries is proportionate to the divisions established by five centuries of European rivalry in the Caribbean.
In conclusion, we can say that psychoanalysis exists in Martinique in spite of all. Changes coming from the inside will probably ensure the development of fecund psychoanalytic thinking.
—GUILLAUME SURÉNA
The international dialing code for French Antilles (Martinique) is: 596
Local Time: Jul 25, 2:28 PM
| Région Martinique | ||
|---|---|---|
|
 |
|
| (Unofficial region flag) | (Region logo) | |
| Location | ||
|
||
| Administration | ||
| Capital | Fort-de-France | |
| Regional President | Alfred Marie-Jeanne (MIM) (since 1998) |
|
| Departments | Martinique | |
| Arrondissements | 4 | |
| Cantons | 45 | |
| Communes | 31 | |
| Statistics | ||
| Land area1 | ||
| Population | (Ranked 24th) | |
| - January 1, 2006 est. | 399,000 | |
| - March 8, 1999 census | 381,427 | |
| - Density (2006) | 354/km² | |
| 1 French Land Register data, which exclude
lakes, ponds, and glaciers larger than 1 km² (0.386 sq. mi. or 247 acres) as well as the estuaries of rivers |
||
 |
||
Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, having a land area of 1,128 km². It is an overseas department of France. As with the other overseas departments, Martinique is also one of the twenty-six regions of France (being an overseas region) and an integral part of the Republic. As part of France, Martinique is part of the European Union, and its currency is the euro. Its official language is French, although almost all of its inhabitants also speak Antillean Creole (Créole Martiniquais). Martinique is pictured on all euro banknotes, on the reverse at the bottom of each note, right of the Greek ΕΥΡΩ (EURO) next to the denomination.
All inhabitants of Martinique are French citizens with full political and legal rights.
Martinique sends four deputies to the French National Assembly and two senators to the French Senate.
The island was under Britain's command during the Seven
Years' War from 1762 to 1763; during the French Revolutionary Wars from
1794 to 1802; and again during the Napoleonic wars from 1809 to 1814. The last British
governor was General Sir Charles Wale.
Napoleon's wife, Joséphine, was born in Martinique to a family of the wealthy Creole elite. The ruins of the Habitation de la Pagerie where she spent her childhood can still be visited in Trois-Ilets, across the bay from Fort-de-France, the island's capital.
During the French Revolution, severe conflicts rapidly broke out, developing into civil war. In 1789, a slave rebellion was put down. The following year open war broke out when monarchists, who wanted freedom from revolutionary France, massacred troops faithful to the parisian revolutionary government. The royalist faction gained the upper hand in 1791 and declared the independence of Martinique followed by refusal to grant rights to the free people of colour. In 1793, the republican-Parisian faction gained support from the revolutionary government in Saint Lucia, which prompted the monarchists to invite British occupation in 1794.
Slavery was banned in 1848. People from India and China were brought to work the sugar cane plantations.
Mount Pelée erupted in 1902, killing 26,000 to 36,000 people and destroying Saint-Pierre.
During World War II the island was controlled by the Vichy regime from 1940-1943; later it was under the Free French Forces.
An important role in the independence movement was played by Aimé Césaire, a famous poet and essayist. Martinique was the home of Frantz Fanon (July 20, 1925 – December 6, 1961), an author, essayist, psychoanalyst, and anti-colonialist revolutionary, who was strongly influenced by Césaire.
The north of the island is mountainous and lushly forested. It features dramatic pitons and mornes. The most dominating of the islands many beautiful mountains is the infamous volcano Mount Pelée. The volcanic ash has created beautiful gray and black sand beaches in the north, contrasting markedly from the white sands of Les Salines in the south.
The south is more easily traversed, though still features some impressive geographic features. Because it is easier to travel and because of the many beautiful beaches, the south receives the bulk of the tourist traffic. The beaches from Pointe de Bout, through Diamant (which features right off the coast the beautiful Roche de Diamant), St. Luce, the town of St. Anne all the way down to Les Salines are very popular.
| 1700 estimate |
1738 estimate |
1848 estimate |
1869 estimate |
1873 estimate |
1878 estimate |
1883 estimate |
1888 estimate |
1893 estimate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24,000 | 74,000 | 120,400 | 152,925 | 157,805 | 162,861 | 167,119 | 175,863 | 189,599 |
| 1900 estimate |
1954 census |
1961 census |
1967 census |
1974 census |
1982 census |
1990 census |
1999 census |
2005 estimate |
| 203,781 | 239,130 | 292,062 | 320,030 | 324,832 | 328,566 | 359,572 | 381,427 | 399,000 |
| Official figures from past censuses and |
||||||||
As an overseas "département" of France, Martinique's culture blends French and Caribbean influences. The city of Saint-Pierre (destroyed by a volcanic eruption of Mount Pelée), was often referred to as the Paris of the Lesser Antilles. Following traditional French custom, many businesses close at midday, then reopen later in the afternoon. The official language is French, although many Martinicans speak Antillean Creole. Mostly based on French, Martinique's Créole also incorporates a few elements of English, Spanish, Portuguese, and African languages. Originally passed down through oral storytelling traditions, it continues to be used more often in speech than in writing.
Most of Martinique's population is descended from African slaves brought to work on sugar plantations during the colonial era. Today, the island enjoys a higher standard of living than most other Caribbean countries. The finest French products are easily available, from Chanel fashions to Limoges porcelain. Studying in the métropole is common for young adults. For the rest of the French, Martinique has been a vacation hotspot for many years, attracting both upper-class and more budget-conscious travelers.
Martinique has a hybrid cuisine, mixing elements of French, African, and Asian traditions. One of its most famous dishes is the Colombo, a unique curry of chicken, meat or fish with vegetables, spiced with a distinctive masala of Bengali or Tamil origins, acidulated with tamarind and often containing wine, coconut milk, and rum. There is also a strong tradition of créole desserts and cakes, often employing pineapple, rum, and a wide range of local ingredients.
Martinique was the main setting and location of the 1944 film To Have and Have Not starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
| Overseas departments and territories of France | |
|---|---|
| Overseas departments1 | French Guiana · Guadeloupe · Martinique · Réunion |
| Overseas collectivities | French Polynesia · Mayotte2 · Saint Barthélemy · Saint Martin · Saint Pierre and Miquelon · Wallis and Futuna |
| Special status | New Caledonia |
| Uninhabited lands | Clipperton Island French Southern and Antarctic Lands (Amsterdam Island • Saint Paul Island • Crozet Islands • Kerguelen Islands • Adélie Land Scattered islands in the Indian Ocean: Bassas da India3 • Europa Island3 • Glorioso Islands2, 3, 4 • Juan de Nova Island3 • Tromelin Island5) |
| 1 Also known as overseas regions • 2 claimed by Comoros • 3 claimed by Madagascar • 4 claimed by Seychelles • 5 claimed by Mauritius | |
| Countries and territories of the Caribbean | |
|---|---|
| Sovereign states | |
| Commonwealth Realms | Antigua and Barbuda · Bahamas · Barbados · Grenada · Jamaica · St. Kitts and Nevis · St. Lucia · St. Vincent and the Grenadines |
| Commonwealth republics | Dominica · Trinidad and Tobago |
| Other republics | Cuba · Dominican Republic · Haiti |
| Dependencies and other territories | |
| British | Anguilla · British Virgin Islands · Cayman Islands · Montserrat · Turks and Caicos Islands |
| Dutch | Aruba · Netherlands Antilles (Bonaire • Curaçao • Saba • Sint Maarten • Sint Eustatius) |
| French | Guadeloupe · Martinique · St. Barthélemy · St. Martin |
| American | Puerto Rico · U.S. Virgin Islands |
| States and dependencies of Middle America |
|---|
| States — Dependencies |
|
Anguilla (UK) · Antigua and Barbuda · Aruba (NL) · Bahamas · Barbados · Belize · British Virgin Islands (UK) · Cayman Islands (UK) · Costa Rica · Cuba · Dominica · Dominican Republic · El Salvador · Grenada · Guadeloupe (FR) · Guatemala · Haiti · Honduras · Jamaica · Martinique (FR) · Mexico · Montserrat (UK) · Navassa Island (US) · Netherlands Antilles (NL) · Nicaragua · Panama · Puerto Rico (US) · St. Barthélemy (FR) · St. Kitts and Nevis · St. Lucia · St. Martin (FR) · St. Vincent and the Grenadines · Trinidad and Tobago · Turks and Caicos Islands (UK) · US Virgin Islands (US) |
| Member states and observers of La Francophonie | ||
|---|---|---|
| Members | Albania · Andorra · Belgium (French Community) · Benin · Bulgaria · Burkina Faso · Burundi · Cambodia · Cameroon · Canada (New Brunswick · Quebec) · Cape Verde · Central African Republic · Chad · Cyprus1 · Comoros · Democratic Republic of the Congo · Republic of the Congo · Côte d'Ivoire · Djibouti · Dominica · Egypt · Equatorial Guinea · Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia · France (including French Guiana · Guadeloupe · Martinique · Saint Pierre and Miquelon) · Gabon · Ghana1 · Greece · Guinea · Guinea-Bissau · Haiti · Laos · Luxembourg · Lebanon · Madagascar · Mali · Mauritania · Mauritius · Moldova · Monaco · Morocco · Niger · Romania · Rwanda · St. Lucia · São Tomé and Príncipe · Senegal · Seychelles · Switzerland · Togo · Tunisia · Vanuatu · Vietnam |
 |
| Observers | ||
| 1 Associate member. | ||
|
Regions of France |
|---|
| Alsace • Aquitaine • Auvergne • Bourgogne
• Bretagne • Centre • Champagne-Ardenne • Corsica • Franche-Comté • Île-de-France • Languedoc-Roussillon • Limousin • Lorraine • Midi-Pyrénées • Nord-Pas de Calais • Basse-Normandie • Haute-Normandie • Pays de la Loire • Picardie • Poitou-Charentes • Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur • Rhône-Alpes Overseas regions: French Guiana • Guadeloupe • Martinique • Réunion |
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Dansk (Danish)
n. - Martinique
Français (French)
n. - Martinique
Deutsch (German)
n. - Martinique
Português (Portuguese)
n. - Martinique
Español (Spanish)
n. - Martinica
中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
马提尼克
中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 馬丁尼克
한국어 (Korean)
마티니크 (카리브해에 있는 프랑스의 섬)
If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.
To select your translation preferences click
