You are warmly invited to the following seminar to be held at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies on Wednesday 14th January:
John Cowley, ‘From the ‘Paris of the West Indies’ to the Antillean Pompeii: St. Pierre, Martinique, at the time of its decimation in 1902’ [abstract below]
Venue: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 28 Russell Square, London
Time: 5pm
The seminar will be followed by a wine reception.
Abstract:
Saint-Pierre, Martinique, was already an important trading centre at the time San Domingue broke from France to become Haiti, in 1802. Sustained metropolitan contact made the city much more open to radical ideas, and it became a focus for the black population’s opposition to slavery and also for defiant expressions of free association by the island’s ‘mixed-race’ inhabitants. By the time slavery was abolished in France’s overseas possessions (1848) these groups had come to dominate the municipal population, though primary power remained with the French colonial elite. The inhabitants called themselves Pierrotins. Full of its own self confidence, the settlement was sometimes called ‘the Paris of the West Indies.’ The locality was also a fount for black Caribbean-French cultural manifestations, including an influential creole carnival, and its musical associate, the biguine. Destroyed in the space of three minutes by the volcanic eruption of Mont Pelée on 8 May 1902, the city suddenly became an emblem of fatalism and, for some commentators, the epitome of wickedness, thereby decimated by a revengeful God. Others blamed ‘la catastrophe’ on maladministration.
Remembered with affection by Pierrotins not in residence at the time of the obliteration, something of the city’s character can be gauged both by events in its history, and reactions to its annihilation. Utilizing the resources of newspaper reports, tourist recollections, and historical discussions, elements of the municipality’s past will be explored in an endeavour to give shape to the romanticism of its ethos.
Convenors: Mary Turner [log in to unmask] and Kate Quinn [log in to unmask]
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