Land, Labor, and Memory: Plantation Landscapes in Martinique

Summary

Landscapes are shaped by the experiences of people over time, serve to establish and reinforce social relations, and are spaces within which individuals actively construct their experiences with each other and with their environment. This paper focuses on plantation landscapes on the island of Martinique, where the significant role of the French sugar industry - made possible by slave labor - in the globalizing Atlantic world is still clearly visible. Plantation sites that have not been lost to development remain on the landscape as crumbling buildings, small-scale fishing or agricultural villages established post-emancipation, or are still in use for large-scale agricultural export production. Using historic maps, satellite imagery and archival sources, this paper will analyze the physical legacy of the plantation economy in two distinct regions of Martinique to explore how colonial settlement patterns and landscape transformations have persisted through time. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Current Perspectives on Plantation Archaeology in the Caribbean   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

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PaperId(s): 243