The first full length inter-disciplinary book to be published on this subject in English, it examines the relationship between politics and society in all three of France's overseas departments in the Caribbean. It has contributions on other salient features of French West Indian society and culture: class and ethnicity, the position of women, relations with Europe, with other Caribbean countries and with the French West Indian community in France. In addition there are also chapters on French West Indian literature and the principal theories of identity in the region, Negritude, Antillanite and Creolite. Among the contributors are French West Indian, British and Jamaican scholars.

“All the ingredients to become the next important book in the field of postcolonial studies with the emphasis on French Caribbean culture and literature.”—Daniel Desormeaux, University of Chicago In Free and French in the Caribbean, John Patrick Walsh studies the writings of Toussaint Louverture and Aimé Césaire to examine how they conceived of and narrated two defining events in the decolonializing of the French Caribbean: the revolution that freed the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1803 and the departmentalization of Martinique and other French colonies in 1946. Walsh emphasizes the connections between these events and the distinct legacies of emancipation in the narratives of revolution and nationhood passed on to successive generations. By reexamining Louverture and Césaire in light of their multilayered narratives, the book offers a deeper understanding of the historical and contemporary phenomenon of “free and French” in the Caribbean. “A fruitful intervention in a growing body of literature and increasingly lively debate on the Haitian Revolution and the figure of Toussaint Louverture, the book also contributes to the emerging scholarship on Césaire, Francophone literature, and postcolonial theory.”—Gary Wilder, CUNY Graduate Center “A valuable contribution to both the rapidly proliferating literature on the Haitian Revolution and the emerging revisionist appreciation of Césaire’s intellectual and political project.”—Small Axe “J.P. Walsh has produced for the nonspecialist reader an excellent analysis of the historiographical discourse on Toussaint Louverture and Aimé Césaire with a focus on the meaning(s) of decolonization in the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.”—New West Indian Guide “That Free and French inspires so many questions is testament to its ambition, the provocative parallel at its heart, and the richness of Walsh’s analysis.”—H-Empire

This marvellous cookbook contains over 150 authentic recipes from the French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Favourites such as Avocado Charlotte, Fish Crepes Saintoise, and Fish Court Bouillon will beckon everyone to the table. Also included are a chapter on local drinks, a glossary on Caribbean food products and a list of sources where speciality ingredients can be purchased.

The French-speaking islands of Martinique, Guadaloupe, Marie-Galante, and Saint Martin come alive as never before in this lavishly illustrated look at one of the most intriguing and beautiful parts of the world.

France experienced a period of crisis following World War I when the relationship between the nation and its colonies became a subject of public debate. The French Imperial Nation-State focuses on two intersecting movements that redefined imperial politics—colonial humanism led by administrative reformers in West Africa and the Paris-based Negritude project, comprising African and Caribbean elites. Gary Wilder develops a sophisticated account of the contradictory character of colonial government and examines the cultural nationalism of Negritude as a multifaceted movement rooted in an alternative black public sphere. He argues that interwar France must be understood as an imperial nation-state—an integrated sociopolitical system that linked a parliamentary republic to an administrative empire. An interdisciplinary study of colonial modernity combining French history, colonial studies, and social theory, The French Imperial Nation-State will compel readers to revise conventional assumptions about the distinctions between republicanism and racism, metropolitan and colonial societies, and national and transnational processes.

Dangerous Creole Liaisons examines the neglected corpus of white Creole writers from the French Caribbean and how their discourse has been reappropriated to expose the significant role these men played in the construction of blackness, French nationalism and culture.

Britain's war with Revolutionary France in the Caribbean was one of the most difficult and dangerous in British history. Why was this war so important to England? Casting new light on British military power and its connection with economic strength, this book reveals how the war in the West Indies changed the future of the Caribbean, altered European attitudes towards blacks, and enabled Britain to sustain its war effort in Europe.

Island Caribs and French Settlers in Grenada, 1498-1763 is the first detailed look at the early modern history of Grenada and the Grenadines. Like the history after 1763, this period is quite intriguing and offers fascinating insights into many aspects of Caribbean history in general. Island Caribs and French Settlers in Grenada looks at the native Amerindian populations and their reactions to Spanish invasion of the region after 1498, the early European colonization of Grenada with the failed British attempt in 1609 and the successful French settlement in 1649, and the wars of subjugation and ultimately extermination of the native populations. It also chronicles the privateering and colonial wars among the Europeans, the trials of colonial development, the establishment of plantation agriculture, and the creation and growth of African chattel slavery and the impact on economic and social institutions. The 113 years of French colonization is analyzed and discussed in great detail. It is a testament to the French and the foundation that they built between 1649 and 1763 that the British were able to create a prosperous colonial economy in the decades after Grenada's cession in 1763.

There were 26—not 13—British colonies in America in 1776. Of these, the six colonies in the Caribbean—Jamaica, Barbados, the Leeward Islands, Grenada and Tobago, St. Vincent; and Dominica—were among the wealthiest. These island colonies were closely related to the mainland by social ties and tightly connected by trade. In a period when most British colonists in North America lived less than 200 miles inland and the major cities were all situated along the coast, the ocean often acted as a highway between islands and mainland rather than a barrier. The plantation system of the islands was so similar to that of the southern mainland colonies that these regions had more in common with each other, some historians argue, than either had with New England. Political developments in all the colonies moved along parallel tracks, with elected assemblies in the Caribbean, like their mainland counterparts, seeking to increase their authority at the expense of colonial executives. Yet when revolution came, the majority of the white island colonists did not side with their compatriots on the mainland. A major contribution to the history of the American Revolution, An Empire Divided traces a split in the politics of the mainland and island colonies after the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765-66, when the colonists on the islands chose not to emulate the resistance of the patriots on the mainland. Once war came, it was increasingly unpopular in the British Caribbean; nonetheless, the white colonists cooperated with the British in defense of their islands. O'Shaughnessy decisively refutes the widespread belief that there was broad backing among the Caribbean colonists for the American Revolution and deftly reconstructs the history of how the island colonies followed an increasingly divergent course from the former colonies to the north.