Marie-Galante () is one of the islands that form Guadeloupe, an overseas department of France. Marie-Galante has a land area of . It had 11,528 inhabitants at the start of 2013, but by the start of 2018 the total was officially estimated to be 10,655, with a population density of .
Administration
Marie-Galante is divided into three communes (with populations at 1 January 2013): Grand-Bourg (5,564 residents), Capesterre-de-Marie-Galante (3,389) and Saint-Louis (2,575).
These three communes formed an intercommunal entity in 1994: the Community of Communes of Marie-Galante (). This is the oldest intercommunal structure of the overseas regions of France.
History
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.
Spanish colonization
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 in Grand-Bourg, and named the island in honor of the flagship (‘gallant Mary’) of the second voyage.
During his second voyage to the West Indies, he designated the first island he found as La Deseada, both islands were registered under Spanish sovereignty in the respective acts. According to L. Martinez de Isasti, a century after the encounter, the name is due to Captain Vasco Martin Cotillos who chose the name of his wife for the island.
French colonization
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 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 enslaved Africans.
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 enslaved people 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. European enslavement of Africans was first abolished in 1794.
British occupation
The British captured Guadeloupe, and with it Marie-Galante, la Désirade, and all Guadeloupe's dependencies, in April 1794. The Treaty of Amiens in 1802 restored them to France. With the restoration, the enslavement of Africans too was reinstated in 1802.
