![[Flag of Saint-Pierre]](../images/m/mq-stp.gif)
Last modified: 2023-04-02 by ivan sache
Keywords: saint-pierre | caduceus (yellow) |
Links: FOTW homepage |
search |
disclaimer and copyright |
write us |
mirrors
Flag of Saint-Pierre - Image by Pascal Vagnat, 18 October 2012
See also:
The municipality of Saint-Pierre (4,453 inhabitants - Pierrotins - in 2009; 3,872 ha) is located on the west coast of Martinique, 30 km north of Fort-de-France.
Saint-Pierre originates in the foundation in 1635 of the St. Peter
Fort by Belain d'Esnambuc, which was the first step in the
colonization of Martinique, achieved in the next 25 years. The land
surrounding the fort was cleared and grown with cassava and potato as
food crops, and with achiote, woad, cocoa trees and tobacco, as cash
crops. A small settlement emerged, made of three boroughs (Fort,
Centre, Mouillage [Mooring]), each of them having its church. The
colony attracted all kind of French and foreign traders, filibusters
and adventurers. Of the "engaged" colonists, mostly coming from
Normandy and Brittany, who were promised a plot of land to clear after
they had served for three years, only a few survived the harsh
environment conditions and hard labour. To resettle the colony, the
King of France allowed "everyone who wanted to go there ... as well as
all valid beggars and male and female tramps forced by imprisonment"
to emigrate there.
Governor Jacques du Parquet became the sole owner of the island in
1650, following the bankruptcy of Compagnie de Saint-Christophe.
He favoured the settlement of the Dutch and Jew colonists expelled
from Brazil by the Portuguese; the new colonists introduced sugarcane
cultivation. At the time, sugar was the most prized colonial product
in Europe, which made the wealth of the planters, traders and
shipowners. Requiring a lot of manpower, sugarcane cultivation
boosted slavery, to the benefit of the port of Saint-Pierre, where the
ships brought African slaves.
Colbert soon realized that the trade from Martinique was mostly
controlled by Dutch merchants, with little profit for France. Raw
sugar was shipped from Saint-Pierre to Vlessingen and Amsterdam by
Dutch shipowners, refined in the Netherlands and sold to France at
high prize. From 1664 onwards, Colbert completely revamped the
colonial policy of the Kingdom. He created the private Compagnie des
Indes Orientales and Compagnie des Indes Occidentales,
reconstituted the Royal Navy (from 10 vessels in 1660 to 130 in 1685),
established military ports and arsenals. Last but not least, he
granted a strict commercial monopoly on colonial trade to the newly
founded companies. The traders of Saint-Pierre did not obey the new
rules, so that Colbert had to send a naval fleet to impose the
"Exclusive System" to the whole island.
Implemented by Jean-Charles de Baas, who was appointed Governor-
General in 1669, the new system redirected sugar from the Amsterdam
refineries to those established in Dieppe, Dunkirk, Lille and La Rochelle. The Dutch reacted by openly fighting war on Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, capturing most of its ships. In 1674, Admiral Ruyters failed to land near Fort-Royal (today Fort-de-France). The
Compagnie was suppressed the same year and Martinique was incorporated
to the Kingdom of France, with the set up of a military and civil
administration. Saint-Pierre became the seat of the Government General
of the French Indies, which was eventually transferred to Fort-de-France in 1692.
In the 18th century, Saint-Pierre morphed into a European-like town,
nicknamed "Little Paris". The wooden huts built by the early colonists
were replaced by stone houses, the streets were cobbled and water
supply was organized form the sources that gushed forth from the Mount
Pelée. The town was the residence of the small social and intellectual elite of the island (békés), whose meeting place was the theater built in 1786. The famous local carnival yielded to the town another nickname, "Tropical Venice".
At the end of the 19th century, Saint-Pierre, counting 26,000
inhabitants, was still the main town of Martinique. The abolishment of
slavery in 1848 and the crash of sugar prices in the 1880s changed the
structure of the local economy; most plantations converted to rum
production, which was more profitable and required less manpower. In
1900, Saint-Pierre was the first rum exporter in the world.
In the early months of 1902, Mount Pelée showed an increased volcanic activity. In April, the northern part of the island was hit by
earthquakes; the submarine cables linking Saint-Pierre to Dominique and Guadeloupe were broken. On 5 May, an eruption suppressed a rum factory, claiming 25 lives, caused a tidal wave in the bay and covered the northern part of the island with ashes. The islanders massively moved to Saint-Pierre, thought to be a safer place. The tight pre-election situation in the town and the lack of scientific knowledge on volcanos at the time caused a gross underestimation of the risk by the authorities. The probability for lava to reach the town was deemed extremely low, because of the distance between the crater and the town (6 km) and the deep valleys expected to absorb lava. Accordingly, only a few hundreds of inhabitants left Saint-Pierre, most békés refusing to abandon their wealthy houses to potential looters.
On 6 May, the intensity of rumbling and ash release by the volcano dramatically increased; the first, unexpected pyroclastic flows (nuées ardentes) were reported north of the town. On 7 May, the scientific commission appointed by the authorities and the local newspapers released optimistic dispatches, recommending the inhabitants "to sleep quietly".
On 8 May, 7:50, the Mount Pelée exploded, releasing a pyroclastic
flow that reached the town 10 minutes later, at a speed of 200 km/h
and a temperature of 1000 °C. In a few seconds, the whole town was
suppressed. Stone walls thicker than one meter were destroyed;
thousands of rum casks exploded. Some twelve ships moored in the port
were also sunk, either by the flow or by the resulting tidal wave, of
3 m in height. The next day, the newspapers announced that all the
inhabitants of the town had been killed and that dead may number 25,000.
Only one person survived the eruption. Four days later, the rescuers
found in the underground dungeon of the former jailhouse a man named
Louis-Auguste Cyparis, who had been arrested following a scuffle;
Cyparis recovered and was subsequently hired by the Barnum Circus.
Some journalists refused to believe the story, claiming that Cyparis
was indeed a looter and could not have survived the heat. The
President of the Court of Appeals eventually confirmed that Cyparis
had indeed been locked in the dungeon during the night of the eruption.
Source: Zananas Martinique website
Ivan Sache, 18 October 2012
The flag of Saint-Pierre (photo, town hall) is white with the municipal coat of arms.
The arms of Saint-Pierre are "Azure a caduceus or a bordure of the
same. The shield surmounted by a mural crown or".
The caduceus represents trade performed peacefully (therefore the
branch of olive behind the column) and carefully (therefore the snakes).
Olivier Touzeau, Pascal Vagnat & Ivan Sache, 18 October 2012
