LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Martinique
built 631 days ago
The Sofitel Bakoua Martinique Resort is an upscale resort with a decidedly French flair. The resort offers comfortable accommodations and a variety of watersports combined with delicious food and friendly service. This resort is ... a favourite of the airline crews.
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The Sofitel Bakoua was the first hotel on Martinique for the upscale traveler, and part of their success is the longevity of their staff. When Mr. Cupit heard about the Sofitel Bakoua, he took the ferry from Fort-de-France and arrived at the hotel at 10:15 am to inquire if they had any openings. By 11:00 am, he was working at the hotel as a bellman, and is now the Resident Manager. He has been at the hotel for 38 years, and is a wealth of knowledge on the history of the hotel and the restaurant.
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Martinique, more vociferous in its demands for independence than Guadeloupe, has had its postwar politics influenced by Aimé Césaire, the Martinique writer who was one of the founders of the Negritude movement. Césaire, first elected as a deputy in 1945, had originally been a member of the Communist Party, but by 1956 he had resigned and formed his own party, the Progressive Party of Martinique. In 1957 Césaire's party won the Martinique elections by an enormous margin, and it seemed that independence would be achieved.
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Martinique has marvellous museums. They include a collection of Paul Gauguin artefacts at the very spot where he painted Martinican beauties and splendid seascapes as well as tropical landscapes. Gauguin's former studio provides a view of St Pierre, once the prettiest and busiest city in the Caribbean-and known as "Little Paris." That ended in 1902 when the volcanic Mt Pelee (Mount Baldy in English) blew up, and 30,000 people died in the space of just a few minutes. Only survivor was the lone prisoner in the city jail. Today a museum and excavations suggest that Little Paris is now the Caribbean's Little Pompeii.
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[N]ow in the ruins of the annihilated city on Martinique a new guest arrives, unknown, never seen before - the human being. Not lords and bondsmen, not Blacks and whites, not rich and poor, not plantation owners and wage slaves - human beings have appeared on the tiny shattered island, human beings who feel only the pain and see only the disaster, who only want to help and succor. Old Mt. Pelee has worked a miracle! Forgotten are the days of Fashoda, forgotten the conflict over Cuba, forgotten "la Revanche" - the French and the English, the tsar and the Senate of Washington, Germany and Holland donate money, send telegrams, extend the helping hand. A brotherhood of peoples against nature’s burning hatred, a resurrection of humanism on the ruins of human culture. The price of recalling their humanity was high, but thundering Mt. Pelee had a voice to catch their ear.
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Not long after French administration was re-established on Martinique, sugar cane's golden era began to wane as glutted markets and the introduction of sugar beets in mainland France eroded prices. With less wealth, the aristocratic plantation owners lost much of their political influence, and an abolitionist movement led by Victor Schoelcher gained momentum. It was Schoelcher, the French cabinet minister responsible for overseas possessions, who convinced the provisional government to sign the 1848 Emancipation Proclamation that brought an end to slavery in the French West Indies.
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