• DOI:10.1080/14788810.2012.719323
• Corpus ID: 218622195

The Second World War as a watershed in the French Caribbean

@article{StrombergChilders2012TheSW,
  title={The Second World War as a watershed in the French Caribbean},
  author={Kristen Stromberg Childers},
  journal={Atlantic Studies},
  year={2012},
  volume={9},
  pages={409 - 430}
}

• Kristen Stromberg Childers
• Published 1 December 2012
• History
• Atlantic Studies

Abstract During the Second World War, Martinique and Guadeloupe became strategically important to Great Britain and the United States, who feared that the Nazis might gain valuable refueling ports, as well as French gold and battleships, if the islands fell under German control. The US Navy drew up plans for a possible invasion of Martinique but the crisis was averted with the signing of a “gentleman's agreement” with Admiral Robert, the Vichy authority on the islands. Martinicans and Guadeloupeans suffered during the war because they were subject to a naval blockade and also the racism of French sailors stationed in the Antilles. Despite the difficulties of this time it is often idealized as a golden age of self-sufficiency in contrast to the postwar consumer society overly dependent on metropolitan France. Critics of the vote for departmentalization in 1946 have interpreted this choice as a pathological decision to embrace French identity at the expense of an authentic Antillean identity. A historical re-examination of this period demonstrates that Antilleans were not choosing the material comforts of departmentalization but were making pragmatic choices about the best path to equality in a changing postcolonial order. Although the United States has been largely forgotten in the debates about departmentalization, the US role in the Caribbean was among the complex set of circumstances precipitating the historic vote of 1946.