When is a nation ‘a nation’? Identity-formation within a French West Indian people (Martinique)

When is a nation ‘a nation’? Identity-

formation within a French West

Indian people (Martinique)n

WILLIAM MILES

Northeastern University and Watson Institute of International Studies, BrownUniversity, USA

ABSTRACT. Nationhood is usually considered a subjective state of being acquired

by a self-conscious group sharing cultural distinctiveness and political goals. Social

scientists and historians also endeavor to delineate objective factors that impart

national status to minority peoples. Rarely do the elected officials of a non-sovereign

people have the opportunity to vote on whether or not their constituency constitutes a

discrete nation. The extraordinary Congress of 2002 in Martinique did provide such an

opportunity, however. The contradictory outcomes of that seminal event – including

the plebiscite one year later on a proposed change of status for this Caribbean island

within the French Republic – reveal much about the ambiguous status of Martinican

group identity. They also underline the need for theoreticians of nationalism to take

into account politically and culturally specific understandings of the very concept of

‘nation’. That a formerly colonised people may materially benefit disproportionately

from ongoing institutional relationships with its former colonial power – counter-

colonialism – also needs to be considered.

Introduction

For the French, easily slaves of juridicism and formalism, a ‘status’ has a certainmythical character (Teulieres 1970: 442).1

The paradigm of counter-colonialism – ‘postindependence materialism . . .constructed in favor of the formerly colonized’ – was originally advanced toexplain the perpetuation of exclusive French citizenship among ethnicDravidians (mostly Tamil) born and resident in India (Miles 1995: 11). Thiscommunity, concentrated in the Union Territory of Pondicherry,2 optedfifteen years after greater India had achieved its independence in 1947, to

Nations and Nationalism 12 (4), 2006, 631–652.

r The author 2006. Journal compilation r ASEN 2006

n Most of the fieldwork for this research was made possible by a sabbatical leave from

Northeastern University. From September 2001 through June 2002 the author was visiting

researcher with the Centre de Recherches sur les Pouvoirs Locaux dans la Caraıbe (CRPLC) at

the Schoelcher campus of the Universite des Antilles-Guyane; he returned to Martinique for a

shorter visit in December 2003. Special thanks go to CRPLC director Justin Daniel.

remain French. Given the exclusivity of Indian nationality law, these ethnicIndians have voluntarily remained expatriates in their country of birth:‘citizens without soil’, who nonetheless benefit from the considerableeconomic advantages redounding upon all citizens of the French Republic(Miles 1990, 1993). Counter-colonialism described a non-sovereign politicaloption in which ‘the former colonizer is exploited much more heavily than theformerly colonized’ (Miles 1995: 12). Exploitation is here used in its mostneutral, descriptive and non-polemical sense.

After six decades of decolonisation without independence (Miles 2001), itappears that the paradigm of counter-colonialism is applicable to many morepopulations than that inhabiting former French India. These are the approxi-mately two million citizens of France living in four overseas departments(states) (DOM) and six overseas collectivities (COM). Spanning such diverseswathes of the globe as the Caribbean Sea, Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean andNorth America, the DOM-COM belie the historicist perspective that assumesthe inevitability of, and popular volition for, decolonisation through nationalsovereignty. The DOM-COM also highlight how post-millennial globalisa-tion, including the construction of a European Union that transcends thegeography of Europe itself, challenges the conventional wisdom with regardto nationalism, sovereignty and independentism.

This article focuses on one of these overseas polities, the French Caribbeanisland of Martinique. Although the homeland of two of the most prominenttwentieth-century Francophone writers on race, colonialism and nationalism –Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon – the overwhelming majority of Martinicansprefer to remain firmly within the French Republic. Since 1946, whenMartinique was converted from colony into overseas department (‘departmen-talisation’), this preference for French sovereignty has been expressed indir-ectly, particularly in presidential and legislative elections; unofficially, publicopinion polling in recent years has also confirmed this pro-status quo sentiment(Miles 2003b: 231–2). The period 1998–2003, however, presented an extra-ordinary opportunity for both elected leaders and the Martinican electorate toexpress themselves directly and officially on the most fundamental questionsregarding their collective identity and their relationship with France. Even thequestion of Martinican nationhood was put to a vote (indeed, several votes).

The contradictory outcomes from this democratic experiment in nationalself-recognition reveal more than just the ambiguous state of group identitywithin this French department of America (FDA). They also reinforce theneed for theoreticians of nationalism to take into account politically andculturally specific understandings of the very concept of ‘nation’.

Metatheorising ‘nation’

Theoreticians of the nation generally adopt an objectivistic position on theirsubject. That is, whether they take a structural, functionalistic or purely

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descriptive approach in theorising the nation, they posit a universalisticmeaning to the concept. However varied with respect to their signaturetheories, most scholars tend to favour general and universal constructionsof the nation phenomenon over local and indigenous ones. Doing otherwisewould impart a much more fluid understanding of ‘nation’, one which woulddepend more fundamentally on cultural, linguistic and intercultural analysisthan on conventional historical or political science.

Significantly for the case study at hand, the forerunner of modern theoriesof nationalism was himself a Frenchman for whom every nation is ‘a soul, aspiritual principle’ (Renan 1882). Intellectual (and national) heir to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Renan grafted a more systematic analysis of the meaningof nation on to the older, more romantic Rousseauian one. Both emphasisedla volonte, the will, of a people to live as a single political entity. Yet neitherseriously entertained the possibility that non-Gallic (let alone non-Western)notions of popular will might rival their own. As an early sociologist of thenation, Max Weber (1948: 176) also emphasised both ‘community of senti-ment’ and collective prestige. His examples ranged from Ireland to China, butdid not integrate Gaelic or Chinese renditions of communal prestige andsentiment.

Rupert Emerson (1960: 95–6) has provided an oft-cited definition which,while appealing for its comprehensiveness, does not invite culturally specificanalysis. A nation, he writes, is a

. . . terminal community – the largest community which, when the chips are down,effectively commands men’s loyalty, overriding the claims of both lesser communitieswithin it and those which cut across it or potentially enfold it within a still greatersociety.

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1963) and political scientist Walker Connor(1990) both quote Emerson, the latter more favorably than the former. Geertzstresses the ambivalent relationship between ‘primordial’ and ‘civic’ – orbetween ethnic and political – bases of group identity. The two overlap butalso clash. While providing an array of regional and cultural examples, Geertzdoes not provide indigenous illustrations of how, for instance, the ‘primordial’versus ‘civic’ dichotomy is rendered or treated in Javanese. Similarly, a usefuldistinction between proletarian and intellectual sources of nationalism isproffered in the early work of Ernest Gellner (1964). Here again, though,while laying out the respective payoffs of a national movement for theintelligentsia vis-a-vis the proletariat, Gellner does not show how the formerconceptualises nationalism differently from the latter. Later, he assumes aneven more objectivist (indeed, Hegelian) stance: ‘Nationalism sees itself as anatural and universal ordering of the political life of mankind. . .’ (Gellner1983: 48).

In their respective paradigms of ‘invention’ and ‘imagination’, Hobsbawmand Ranger (1983) and Anderson (1991) posit much more contingent scenariosin the development of the national idea. Emphasising instrumentalism and

Identity-formation in Martinique 633


institutions, while richly adding to an understanding of the purposes andmethods of nationalism, deflects attention from the specificity of culturalembrace of the phenomenon.

Kedourie (1960) opens the door to an appreciation of the qualitativedifferences between a European understanding of nation formation – or, moreprecisely, understanding of nation formation in Europe – and its equivalent innon-Western society empires. He nevertheless universalises the phenomenonby postulating a common type of societal breakdown, upon which a hithertodisenfranchised group of educated moderns capitalises. Elsewhere (1971) helinks African and Asian to European secular millenarianism: another trans-cultural extrapolation. At the same time, he more usefully illustrates howindigenous concepts – such as Hindu swaraj, connoting spiritual self-control –are exploited for political and nationalistic ends.

With Karl Deutsch (1953), an outright social scientific approach to thestudy of nationhood appears: a functionalistic, and presumably quantifiable,measure of mutual intelligibility. Social communication becomes the linchpinof common nationality. Deutsch emphasises modern modes and technologiesof communication. Yet the experience of globalised internet communicationhas not tended toward a diminishment of national identification, despiteheightened transnational social communication.

Smith’s (1989) historical differentiation between ‘lateral’ and ‘vertical’ethnic communities is insightful but not really applicable to societies suchas Martinique, which are the pure products of slavery and colonialism andhave no pre-bureaucratic existence. (Lateral communities gradually incorpo-rate lower social strata and local cultures in an elitist manner; vertical onesmust overcome or transcend religious based identities. Both rely on bureau-cratisation of state and society.) Whereas Smith acknowledges (1981) that thestruggle between divine and secular power does indeed take different forms indifferent societies, there are only three templates so envisioned (neo-tradi-tionalist, assimilationist and reformist). Even this more nuanced patternobscures the specificity of cultures’ self-definition of nationhood.

Walker Connor (1973; see also 1978 and 1990) comes closest to embracingthe perspective advanced here. Connor focuses on the confusing tendency ofscholars to use ‘nation’ to signify ‘state’. In the process, he comes toappreciate the national bias that lay thinkers and academics alike display intreating the very phenomenon they are supposed to elucidate. ‘The absence ofa common origin may well make it more difficult, and conceivably impossible,for the American to appreciate instinctively the idea of the nation . . . with thesame poignant clarity as do the Japanese, the Bengali, or the Kikuyu’ (Connor1978: 381; emphasis added). Especially relevant to the case at hand, Connoravers that it is ‘difficult for an American to appreciate what it means . . . for aFrenchman to be French, because the psychological effect of being Americanis not precisely equatable’ (ibid.).

By showing how incipient nations emerge before nationalism per seactually does, Armstrong (1982) also points us in a useful direction. Collective

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self-consciousness is a necessary, if insufficient, condition for nationalism.Boundaries, symbols, myth and language all help to create a sense of in-groupfor various ethnic groups in specific ways. Just as Celts and Jews incipientlyenvisioned their respective groups differently from each other, so would thefuture content of Celtic nationhood differ substantively from that of theJewish people.

However divergent the above analyses of the nation, their expositors doagree on one point: a nation is never born in an instant; it gestates over time,sometimes taking as long as centuries. Unlike a state, with which an actualdate may be associated (either by its own declaration of independence or itslegal recognition by the international community), nations do not have birthdates. Nor do the theorists and historians envision circumstances under which‘potential nations’ get the opportunity to decide, especially in a voting forum,whether or not they actually constitute ‘real nations’. That is why the FrenchWest Indies constitutes a unique case within the otherwise exhaustiveliterature on nationalism.

Demographic and juridical overview

Caribbean Amerindians had already dispossessed indigenous Arawaks by thetime France took possession of Martinique in 1635. Early French colonialpolicy left little room for coexistence with these ‘natives’, especially since theirservitude was marked by a high degree of mortality. Through sickness,warfare and expulsion, by the eighteenth century the Caribs had disappearedas a discrete community.

French colonial planters thus turned to Africa, via the slave trade, as asource of labour for their plantations. Descendants of African slavesconstitute the vast majority of Martinicans today. Until the French abolitionof 1848, free ‘mulattoes’ – the reproductive outcome of masters and slaves –constituted an intermediate legal class between white and black. Metissageremains an important element of Martinican ethnicity, though its significanceis socioeconomic rather than political. Following emancipation, East Indianswere indentured for labour in the French West Indies, albeit more inGuadeloupe than Martinique. They too have added to Martinican metissage,hybridity and creoleness (Bernabe et al. 1993).

Yet the very notion of ‘Martinicanhood’ is problematic. It is especiallydifficult to trace its origins as a functional and integrative island-wide identity.Colonists, blacks, mulattoes and East Indians maintained their separateidentities well after abolition officially decreed equality for all islanders.From emancipation until departmentalisation, politics on the island centredaround the struggle for equal rights as French citizens within the FrenchRepublic. By the same token, social advancement was defined in termsof access to the French public (and secular) school system. By extension,this also entailed mastery of the French language over and above the



Creole vernacular. Equal status as Frenchmen trumped pride of ‘beingMartinican’. At best, un(e) Martiniquais(e) was one who hailed fromand resided on the island of Martinique. In the absence of any seriousmovement for separation from France, however, well into the twentiethcentury few islanders thought that occupying the same insular space conferredupon them and their fellow islanders a unifying sociopolitical identity asMartinican.

In the 1950s autonomy (though not independence) was advocated by AimeCesaire and his newly founded Martinican Progressive Party. (Cesaire brokewith the French Communist Party in 1956.) Having co-founded the negritudemovement for black identity within the French-speaking colonial world in the1930s, Cesaire laid the foundation for a veritable French West Indian, andindeed Martinican, group consciousness (Cesaire 1971). But most Martini-cans were wary of embracing a label that might be construed as over-shadowing, if not replacing, their hard-won and fiercely protected status asFrench. Frantz Fanon most systematically analysed the ambiguity of the twoidentities (Fanon 1952).

In 1981, in the wake of the French Socialist victory of Francois Mitterrand,Cesaire (who never advocated outright independence) called for a ‘morator-ium’ on the status question. An early attempt to restructure the localgovernmental system (an ill-adapted imitation of the French department andregion) failed. For the next two decades the bywords of French politics inMartinique were decentralisation, development and dignity. But the continuingreality, particularly in the economic realm, was dependency. Newer problemsassociated with globalisation, especially drugs and violence, increasingly cameto preoccupy the body politic of Martinique. Yet was that body politic at coreCaribbean or fundamentally French? In order to address this question, adigression into the historical nature of French nationalism is in order.

France: one nation, indivisible

Creating a single nation out of the rustic descendants of the Gauls – in EugenWeber’s terms, to turn peasants into Frenchman – was not only a politico-existential challenge for France historically (Weber 1976).3 Moulding ofBasques, Bretons, Normands, etc. into one political entity became the modelfor European – indeed, Western and modern – nationalism. That the task wasinitiated under royal auspices but clinched as a project of the Republic isincidental. Catholicity was the early glue that, Protestant Hugenots andSephardic Jews excepted, helped create a national character, especially vis-a-vis northern and eastern neighbors. But it was the acceptance of French as thelingua franca that truly made, from the sundry of micropolities, a singleFrench nation.

One cannot overemphasise the extent to which la nation became the secularequivalent of dogma. Jacobin ideology and Napoleonic imperialism conjoined

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to elevate the idea of nation as the linchpin of Frenchness. Consolidation ofnumerous cultural groups into the idea of France required a fierce attachmentto the necessity of an exclusive national identity. The tactic was assimilation:from Brest to Carcassone – even on offshore Corsica – local patois wasdevalued in favour of national language, indispensable customs relegated toquaint folklore. Unlike the American Declaration of Independence andConstitution, la Constitution Francaise placed absolute importance on thenation. Lack of a formal, written constitution for the United Kingdom hasperhaps diminished the affective weight of ‘nation’ in the British psyche aswell. Despite its own insular variety of colonialism, the very non-Cartesianbrand of London-projected hegemony never truly attempted the suppressionof Welsh, Scottish and, especially, Irish nationalism. Conflation of Englishwith British identity has never been, as Linda Colley (1992) has shown, aviable project.

Conflation of French with Antillean (and other overseas) identity has, onthe other hand, been a perfectly natural project. To do in the four OldColonies in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean what was done in continentalFrance – to turn ex-slaves into Frenchmen – was a logical extensionof the formation of France itself. Juridically, this was accomplished by the1946 law of assimilation (demanded by the colonised themselves) thattransformed their colonies into departments, the same institutional unit intowhich metropolitan French territory is administratively divided. That anysegment of these assimilated departments should claim its own status ofnation, however tepidly and temporarily, is, within the French mould,particularly remarkable.4

Martinique: nation, people, or population?

The experience of Martinique well illustrates the subjectivity of nationaldefinition. For most of the first three centuries following the island’ssettlement by and sovereignty under France, islanders were referred to bytheir racial and social status: bekes (white colonists); slaves; mulatres (mixedrace); coolies (East Indians); chinois (Chinese). ‘Creole’ originally referred tothe (white) French born overseas, in the colonies; eventually, the term wasapplied to the indigenous group that emerged from the overseas melting potand especially to the vernacular language. To beMartiniquais(e) is a relativelyrecent notion of group identity, one that remains problematically linked torace (Burton 1993). (That the bekes, descendants of the original settlers,should also be considered Martinican is contested in radical and nationalistcircles.)

French republicanism, as defined in the Constitution, admits of only asingle people, however: le peuple francais, the French people. It goes withoutsaying that the notion of discrete nations within the French nation swingsbetween the nonsensical and the subversive. This is so despite gradual social



acceptance of a culturally diverse society, whose most obvious face in theMetropole is that of the North African.

How, therefore, to describe Martinicans, Guadeloupeans, Guyanese andReunionnais separately from one another? In French constitutional language,they were (beginning in 2003) to be designated as populations d’outre-mer – thefirst time that any part of the French body politic was redefined as ‘popula-tions’. In vernacular discourse, of course, the term ‘population’ carries muchless political and emotional weight than that of ‘people’ – much less ‘nation’.But this legal and semantic choice of collective definition was never put toeither the citizens or local representatives of the overseas departments beforeappearing in the revised Constitution (see below).

Perhaps the one word that most Martinicans could use to describethemselves as a collective entity is pep. However, no Creole term (this one isderived from the French peuple but has more general connotations than‘people’) would have legitimacy in French jurisprudence.

The Extraordinary Congress of Martinique5

In 1998, in an effort to identify and solve the main obstacles to development inthe French overseas departments, Socialist Prime Minister Jospin appointedMartinican senator Claude Lise and Reunion representative Michel Tamayato visit all the overseas departments and come up with concrete suggestionsfor administrative and economic improvement. Their report resulted, inMartinique, in a special session (le Congres) of the island’s two deliberativeassemblies.

In December 2000 the French parliament authorised the LOOM, a body ofnew legislation for the overseas departments. Article 62 of the LOOMrecognised a general right to self-determination and thereby envisionedrevision of the French constitution. This entailed modifying Article 73 whichregulated the place of the overseas departments within the Fifth Republic.

Left–right consensus (a la francaise) regarding overseas evolution wasevident in President Jacque Chirac’s speech in Martinique on 11 March 2000.The president spoke of a ‘great demand for recognition of [the overseasFrench] personality, dignity, identity, and capacity to assume for themselves agreater share of their destiny’. Chirac also invited governmental reform, for ‘astatus is never anything but an instrument in the service of a collectiveundertaking at a given point in time . . . The departmental institution . . . hasperhaps reached its limits . . . Uniform statuses have seen their day . . . Eachoverseas collectivity, if it wishes, must be able to evolve towards a differ-entiated status’ (Chirac 2000).

At the Congress, held in Martinique in June 2001 and February–March of2002, the major recommendation to transform Martinique into a ‘newterritorial collectivity’ passed easily, 62–20 with one abstention. However, aproposed amendment from a pro-independence party created turmoil. The

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amendment called for the Congress to acknowledge ‘the Martinican peopleand nation’ – the first time a representative body duly constituted under therubric of the French Republic was asked to do so. Officialisation ofMartinican nationhood seemed to be under way.

The ensuing debate was remarkable. Martinique’s own elected representa-tives deliberated over their very existence – or not – as a nation and apeople. Such propositions, a priori, were at variance with the longstandingconcept of a French nation, ‘one and indivisible’. Martinican politiciansdebated whether there was theoretical space for a Martinican nation within aFrench one.

Aime Cesaire’s long-time deputy Camille Darsieres – author of Originsof the Martinican Nation (Darsieres 1974) – announced that he (and hisfellow PPM members) would not vote to recognise Martinique as a nation.The objective existence of the Martinican nation he did not question – butwere Martinicans, as a whole, politically and psychologically ready for sucha pronouncement? Rather than alienating the bulk of the islanders, theearliest of Martinican nationalists would not endorse the declaration ofnationhood.

Before the actual vote, a friendly motion was accepted to proceed with twoseparate votes: one recognising the Martinican people, the other the Marti-nican nation. So did the Congress affirm the existence of a Martinicanpeople separately from that of a nation of Martinique. Whereas the ‘peoplemotion’ passed with no negative votes,’ the ‘nation motion’ garneredonly 23.

Members of the Martinican Congress were sensitive to the politicallycharged nature of defining their constituents as nation and/or people.Excitement at the liberationist thrust of their vote soon gave way to soberreflection and constituent backlash – so much so that several elected officialschanged their minds, altering their stance between their pro-nation vote asmembers of the Congress and their ratification of it as regular members of theconstituent councils.

According to the terms setting up the Congress, all its resolutions wereadvisory, requiring endorsement by the separate councils (regional andgeneral) from which its members were drawn. While the regional councilendorsed the ‘Martinique as nation’ declaration, the general council rejectedit. To such an ambiguous fate was Martinican nationhood consigned.

From Congress to consultation

One and a half years later, the electorate of Martinique was called upon topronounce itself on an even milder question: proposed institutional changesconcerning their relationship with France. On 7 December 2003 voters wereasked to endorse or reject the proposition that would have converted theisland from ‘department’ of France into a ‘new collectivity’. The most



important change would have been the replacement of the overlapping (andoft competing) regional and general councils – a structure designed to mimicthat of Metropolitan France but anomalous on account of Martinique’s smallsize – with a single assembly.

Barely a thousand votes separated the ‘oui’ advocates from those of thevictorious ‘non’. Still, the rejection stung the partisans of institutional reform,who ranged from the loyal opposition of island socialists to outrightindependentists willing to embrace pragmatic compromise strictly within theFrench Republic. All had bent over backwards to reassure the electorate thatthe vote endangered nothing about the essential relationship of Martiniquewithin the French Republic.

Contrast between the historic, if mostly symbolic, vote of the Congressregarding Martinique’s ‘nationhood’ and electoral rejection of the singleassembly illuminates the complexity of Martinican national identity. It alsoreinforces the major thesis of this article: that theories of nationhood,nationalism and national identity must take full account of locally definedcultural and linguistic notions of ‘the nation’ before passing judgement on thenational status of any given minority.

Constitutional revision

As noted above, the general council rejected the Congress’s declaration ofMartinique as a nation. Nor did the endorsement of ‘peoplehood’ find a placein follow-up institutional recommendations.

Instead, in 2003 French jurists and parliamentarians revised articles 72–3of the Constitution to enable the consultation of ‘populations’ (a moreantiseptic, less politically charged term) with respect to administrative change:

The Republic recognizes, within the French people, overseas populations, within acommon ideal of liberty, equality and fraternity.No change . . . in governance . . . can take effect without the prior consent of theelectors of the collectivity or the part of the collectivity so concerned.

It was in this sense that a popular consultation, irrespective of the outcome,was significant: for the first time, a portion of the French electorate (read: anoverseas minority), rather than all eligible voters of France, was enabled tovote on a question regarding institutional change within a national territory.Hence, the distinction between a non-binding ‘consultation’ of the electoratevis-a-vis a legislatively decisive ‘referendum’ of the nation as a whole.6

Assemblee unique bis

Scrupulous adherence to administrative sameness with the Metropole gaverise to the following anomaly: the double status of Martinique as region anddepartment (DROM). Whereas in Metropolitan France several departmentscombine into a region, each of the overseas departments is its own region. In

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relatively small territories, then, there coexisted an elected general council (forthe department) and regional council (for the region). In the early 1980s, theSocialist government under Francois Mitterrand had already proposed toremedy this anomaly, an anticipated cause of institutional inefficiency, bycombining the two into a single organ. In 1982, however, France’s Constitu-tional Council pronounced the plan unconstitutional (Miles 1986: 231–4).

It took the better part of twenty years for the French government – nowconservative, under Jacques Chirac – to embrace the ‘Single Assembly’ ideaand to amend the constitution in a manner designed to facilitate the changeand satisfy the prior objections of the Constitutional Council. Beyond thejuridical objections was an underlying political premise: that a majority of theMartinican electorate could now accept an institutional reform without itbeing interpreted as a sly step towards independence. More practically,numerous examples of the redundancy of the dual council system, resultingin a drag on development, had surfaced in the interim, rendering the reform acommon sense measure.7

Officially, the French government did not take a stance on how it wishedthe ‘population’ to vote. Given the considerable time and political capitalexpended by the Overseas Minister, Brigitte Girardin, there is little doubt thatthe government desired an affirmative outcome. Madame Girardin went togreat pains to reassure the voters on the limited stakes: ‘How can oneimagine’, she rhetorically asked during an interview, ‘that the president ofthe Republic might pose a question that, at its heart, would mean the cuttingoff of the overseas departments?’ (L’Express 2003b). Playing with thepolitically charged term largage (a maritime term meaning ‘cutting loose’),the minister insisted that the proposal constituted rather an ancrage (anchor-ing) (L’Express 2003a).

President Jacques Chirac himself, however, managed to project in the run-up to the consultation an image of studied neutrality. Rather than refuting itsMetropolitan patron, the local right obscured the Chiracian endorsement of aconsultation, reserving its wrath for local advocates of a ‘oui’ outcome.Politics of fear trumped considerations of bureaucratic amelioration andmaterial improvement: fear of losing one’s place within the French Republicand the European Community; and, in consequence, (counter-colonial) fearof losing the tangible benefits associated with this loss of supra-island identity.In many respects, it was a return to the ambience of 1981, when localconservatives successfully portrayed a vote for Socialist presidential candidateFrancois Mitterrand as a vote for independence (Miles 1986; Satineau 1986).Twenty-two years later, the prospect of decolonisation as independence, notas counter-colonialism, remained a powerful, if implicit, scare tactic.

Partisans of the ‘Oui’

The lineup for the ‘yes’ vote on the consultation basically mirrored thatpushing for change during the Congress a year before. It included the hitherto



pro-departmentalist left, as embodied in the Socialist Federation of Martini-que; the once pro-autonomy Martinican Progressive Party (PPM) founded byAime Cesaire; independentist and green parties (Martinican IndependentistMovement [MIM]; Modemas; PALIMA); and moderate movements ofbasically conservative composition. These groups, by flyer, broadcast, op-ed, and in-person campaigning, reiterated basic arguments about the stream-lining of local governance and the developmental capacities that would bethereby unleashed. In essence, they advanced the same claims made twodecades earlier, when it was the Socialist government that proposed a SingleAssembly. Yet this time, there was a more transparent defensiveness to theircampaign: a need to reassure the electorate that a Yes outcome would in nosense jeopardise the island’s status as part of France. This defensivenessstemmed from two sources: (1) unlike in 1982, when public opinion could onlybe stirred concerning a parliamentary change, in 2003 the electorate wasitself asked to vote; and (2) recognition of the emotional baggage enjoyed bythe No side.

It is also true that, unlike 1982, the local left was now in the awkwardposition of indirectly supporting a rightist government nationally; after all, itwas under Jacques Chirac’s overall ministerial responsibility that the proposalwas being put to popular consultation in the first place. Yet the presidentialelection of 2002 had already cleared the psychological gap of cross-cleavagevoting: faced with a choice between the relatively moderate incumbentpresident and the chauvinistically nationalist, arguably racist Jean-Marie LePen, the Martinique electorate had given Chirac his greatest score in anydepartment of the Republic.

Underneath the official rhetoric, however, ostensible proponents of thereform evinced fine-tuned ambiguity. This went beyond the MartinicanSocialist Jean Crusol decamping from his party’s position and declaring hewould vote No. It went beyond PPM leader Camille Darsieres repeating hisparty’s support for Yes but announcing that he himself would stay home (anambivalent position rendered more ambivalent by his subsequent repudiation/clarification of it). More disconcerting were local political leaders, especiallyat the municipal level, who publicly announced their Yes stance but privately,it is often stated, informed their constituents to vote No. For beyond the high-blown rhetoric and idealistic language for efficiency and change was aninescapable risk: a Single Assembly would be composed of fewer members(and staff, and patronage possibilities) than the regional council and generalcouncil combined.8 Overall loss of positions, perks and privileges would beinevitable.

Also discomfiting, even for so-called proponents, was the ideologicaluncertainty: Who would preside over this greatly empowered Assembly?Both the moderate president of the general council, Claude Lise of the PPM,and the charismatic independentist president of the regional council,Alfred Marie-Jeanne of the MIM, campaigned collegially in favor of thereform. (Lise and Marie-Jeanne, the erstwhile autonomist and inveterate

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independentist, respectively, were the most public faces campaigning for Oui.)While ‘checks and balances’ is not part of either French or Martinicanpolitical vocabulary, the redundant and overlapping dual council systemprovided such a de facto limitation on power. A Single Assembly wouldnullify this institutional limitation. Not even vocal advocates of the reformwere comfortable with the undefined implications.

Partisans of the ‘Non’

As with the partisans of the ‘Oui’, opponents of the consultation questionconsisted of both well-known and established (generally conservative) groupsand parties – such as the Martinican Forces of Progress (FMP), headed byMiguel Laventure – and ad hoc committees (Collective of Democrats for a‘No’ at the December 7 Consultation; Committee for the Development of theFrench Department of Martinique).

The essence of the No vote campaign can be summoned up in a 1 July 2003flyer distributed by the so-called Martinican Forces for Progress: proponentsof the consultation, they claimed, actually desired autonomy,

. . . which leads to an endangering of our current rights and those which we might havetomorrow, and even more grave a reconsideration of our relations with France andEurope.

Danger of the disappearance of the department; of autonomy; of a first steptowards independence: such were the major arguments recycled from theearlier attempt at administrative reform in the 1980s. To this was added anelement of entrapment: that the proposal itself was so ambiguous as todisguise its true import. To make this point, the opposition employed its mostpowerful rhetorical weapon: a Creole idiom that every Martinican wouldrecognise from his and her childhood. ‘Nou pas ka achete chatt an sak’, wentthe saying that summarised the pro-status quo position: ‘We should not buy acat in the bag’, i.e. take on, sight unseen, what is proposed. What kind of cat isit? Healthy? Sick? Alive? Dead? ‘Be careful,’ went the subtext. ‘The trueimport of this proposal is not known.’ And when in doubt, walk away.

Opponents of the consultative question profited both from its jargon-ladenformulation and from extensive (and at times pedantic) attempts by itsproponents to explain and clarify the issue. Yet the more the Yes partisanstried to explain, the more confused the electorate seemed to become. It was asif the population was being subjected to a crash course on administrative lawand statutory jurisprudence. The opposition took full advantage of the gapbetween lesson imparted and idea retained, attributing the resulting confusionnot only to the intrinsic fogginess of the question but to the deliberatelydisguised intentions of its proponents.

Another insinuation that played well was a generalised distrust of politi-cians and politics (Suvelor 2004). It was all ‘political manipulation’, asone anti-consultation tract put it. That elected leaders from a variety of



ideological camps had come together was itself cast as a cause for suspicion.Rather than congratulating habitual ideological adversaries for a remarkableshow of consensus, the ‘enthusiastic coming together of arch departmentalists,declared independentists and autonomists . . . is an unnatural coalition out ofwhich nothing good can emerge’. If, for the American people, 7 December1941 is associated with a reactive ethos to Pearl Harbor of having ‘nothing tofear but fear itself ’, for Martinicans the consultative vote of 7 December 2003was based on the politics of fear itself (Delsham 2003).9

As noted above, an unexpected ally of the anti-consultative question campappeared in the form of the first secretary of the Martinican branch of theSocialist Federation. Professor of economics and regional councillor, JeanCrusol, had at first promoted the Socialist Federation of Martinique position(unlike its counterpart in Guadeloupe) in favour of administrative reform.But his growing distrust of the national government – one which he saw aspromoting privatisation at the expense of local governments – led him topublicly renounce his party’s position less than three weeks before the actualvote. As a result, he was compelled to resign from his position as party leader.In an interview with the local press, Crusol declared that he ‘did not wish to beone to push Martinicans into becoming consenting victims of the anti-socialpolicy of the government’ (Gallion 2003b).

Figure 1. ‘No. Let Us Not Buy a Cat in a Bag’.

644 William Miles


Less public, but no less significant, was the opposition of the hereditary,local elite. Descendants of the original French settlers of the island, the bekeshad weathered well the transition from a slave-based and plantation economyto one based on wholesale import, tourism and construction. Behind thescenes, they too brought their influence to bear in opposing the proposedchange in departmental status. Defenders of island autonomy when theRepublic ‘threatened’ slave abolition and later equality through departmen-talisation, bekes had long come to accept that their continued prosperity laywith unequivocal linkage to the Metropolitian polity and economy. Prospectsof delinkage with France, however remote an outcome from the consultativequestion, was enough to galvanise an influential enough portion of the bekesto lend their financial weight to the No campaign.

Results a la Floridienne and local analysis

Despite the high stakes that the consultative question supposedly represented,island-wide abstention – a longstanding pox on Martinican democracy – was

Figure 2. ‘With the President of the Republique, Let Us Maintain the Department.

Martinicans, do not let go of the prey for its shadow’.



characteristically high: fewer than forty-four per cent of eligible votersparticipated. Did such indifferent electoralism reinforce the claim that ‘Onecan now even conceive of a scenario in which a local referendum onindependence (were France’s constitutional guardians to so allow it) mightresult in confoundingly low voter turnout’ (Miles 2003b: 249). Or was it thecomplex manner in which the question was posed that discouraged so manyfrom voting?10

Complexity was compounded by an exchange between duelling academics.Opponents of the consultative question sponsored the visit of a Metropolitanlaw professor whose scholarly credentials reinforced their shared position onthe dangers of a ‘Yes’ result as regards Martinique’s ultimate relationship withFrance and Europe. Proponents countered with a booklet composed by threeprominent social scientists from the local campus of the University of theFrenchWest Indies and Guyana. Even if the weight of jurisprudence was on theside of the latter, their contention that their colleague from France deliberatelyperpetrated a ‘confusion . . . between institutional organization and legislativeregime’ (elsewhere put as ‘the distinction between institutional evolution andchange in status’ [Daniel et al. 2003]) would have greater resonance in seminarthan ballot booth. More important than the logic of the academy was theappeal of the mayors; even if slowly decreasing in influence, municipal politicsremains key to an understanding of democracy in Martinique (Constant 1988).In this case, the most effective approach was that of conservative mayors whoinstructed their constituents to vote ‘Non’ (Rabathaly and Gallion 2003). Interms of party politics, ‘the result confirme[d] the progressive shrinking of theinfluence of the PPM’ (Saux 2003), hitherto the island’s most important partyand the institutional incarnation of Aime Cesaire.

In the end, though it was only by a scant 1,051 votes, the consultativequestion was rejected.11 Would the result have been different had the questionbeen posed more clearly, more directly, more transparently? Did the newemphasis on creating a ‘new territorial collectivity’ (as opposed to a SingleAssembly), whose attributes were only vaguely predefined, scare off potentialYes voters? Would a truly rigorous campaign by local leaders supposedly infavour have made a difference? What is most certain is that the rejection of theconsultative question reinforced a longstanding attachment, in heart as well asword, to the notion of ‘department’.

Strictly speaking, in the French juridical lexicon ‘department’ refers tothe administrative unit into which the Republic is divided (in Americanterminology, the equivalent is ‘state’). But for citizens of overseas France,more than just a dry concept of political science or administrative law,belonging to a ‘department’ has, for over half a century, represented the veryessence of being not a colony but rather an integral component of the FrenchRepublic. In an overseas context, the very term thus connotes Frenchness: thelaws and institutions of the Republic, and all material benefits accruingtherefrom. Irrespective of the minimal substantive change associated withbecoming a ‘territorial collectivity’, the mere notion of no longer being a

646 William Miles


‘department’ indubitably made many Martinican voters – and probably themajority – opposed to entertaining the Yes option (Lise 2004). Once again,sensitivity to the affective connotations of terms (even ostensibly legalisticones) that bear on the process and content of nationalism is essential to a fullunderstanding of the process of nation formation.

In this regard, consider this post-consultative analysis in the mainstream localpress. Opponents of the question, it was asserted, ‘often relied on an argument ofa previous time, appealing to the sentiment of belonging to the Nation’ (Gallion2003a). Note the capitalised expression la Nation, which even in post-millennialMartinique, still implicitly translates as ‘France’. More than the popularisationof a local, bottom-up reinterpretation of history and culture, a veritableMartinican nationalism would require dismantling of the French republicanmindset. Until now, even for the overseas French (but what is the nationaldifference? still asks the classic departmentalist/assimilationist), the notion of amulti-national French state is nonsensical at best, anathema at worst.

For sure, an historic vote recognising the Martinican nation was passed bythe extraordinary Congress in 2002. But formal votes can be rescinded,overruled or otherwise nullified – as was indeed the case here, with thesymbolically charged proposition being rejected by one of the island’s twopopularly elected ratifying bodies. Even the Congress’s overarching proposalfor administrative reform was rebuffed by the population-at-large. Not only isthe sensitive issue of Martinican nationhood, long taboo in local discourse,dormant once again. The much milder issue of institutional change – ofMartinique’s status as a department – has similarly been put on indefinite hold.

The true ‘vote’ on national status that ultimately counts is the one made inthe hearts and minds of those hundreds of thousands of individuals – theircolonial and slave ancestry aside – who have been raised, educated, entertainedand politicised by a European nation-state system. This system has expendedenormous resources, manpower and capital on reducing the differences ingeography, culture and history between it and its overseas extensions. From theperspective of the Metropolitan (erstwhile colonial) system, the enterprise hasbeen a success: the majority of the overseas populations much prefer the statusquo than any change in their administrative status (much less the prospect ofindependence). In so declaring, the electorate has no compunction aboutdistancing itself from the majority of its own elected leaders (Dassonville2004). From the perspective of the overseas peoples themselves, remaining partof medium-sized power, and indeed becoming integrated within an expandedEuropean Union, progressively outweighs the receding Sirens of an anachro-nistic ideology of national liberation.

Paradox redux

Martinican politics would not be true to itself without a healthy dose ofparadox (Miles 1986). Having rejected in December the consultative question



most vigorously promoted by Claude Lise and Alfred Marie-Jeanne, thelongstanding political leaders who had staked much of their political capitaland reputation on a successful outcome, three and a half months later thesame electorate re-elected both men, by record scores, in the cantonal andregional elections of 21 and 28 March 2004. Even more paradoxical, after thewithering defeat of the plebiscite, than Dr Lise’s triumphal return to the headof the general council was the landslide that Marie-Jeanne’s independentistparty, allied with the National Council of Popular Committees (CNCP),enjoyed. An absolute majority of declared independentists thus governed theregional council.

One leftist commentator dismissed the paradox as being ‘only apparent’because, ‘in the end, the aspirations of the independentist leader and those ofthe majority of voters converge: more responsibility, more dignity, moreauthority for the country Martinique’ (Delsham 2004). Note the choice of theword pays (country) over la nation. One must also recognise the polemicaltone of this pro-Marie-Jeanne journalist. After all, what had most recentlyplayed in Marie-Jeanne’s favor in the public square was his fiscal philosophy –vainly contested by professional economists – that it is better for the region(over which the independentist leader presides) to set aside a good part of itsreceipts and grants as savings rather than spending it all. From a develop-mental point of view, the independentist’s frugal approach to budget manage-ment is highly contestable, if not flawed: but it did resonate strongly with alocal populace who had been raised on the family budget principle of ‘If youhave five francs, spend three but put two aside’ (Fedee 2004).

More nuanced and astute is this passage from the essay cited above.Referring to the counter-colonial reality, at least as it affects the overseasdepartments, Delsham writes:

Geopolitical needs have changed and the last of the colonized of the ex-empire havesurfaced to control the most intimate levers of the functioning of an Administrationsupposed to dominate them, and are active participants in the redistribution of Frenchand European wealth (Delsham 2004: 8).

Marie-Jeanne’s personal charisma, political rebelliousness, and reputation fordirectness and honesty have made him the most admired of Martinicans whoincarnates an overall goal nevertheless eschewed by his fellow islanders. AsAime Cesaire slowly passes from the political scene (he is now over ninetyyears old), Marie-Jeanne will likely become the future personification –however contradictory – of Martinican identity.12

Conclusion

Must one conclude that nationalism as a serious political project in Marti-nique is dead? To the contrary, the case of the overseas departments of France(of which Martinique serves as but one incisive example) compels a reconsi-deration of classic approaches to nationalism and nationhood. It behooves

648 William Miles


students of nationalism to consider the possibility that local expressions ofcultural nationalism (here, as expressed in Antillean music and dance and inthe Creole language) may indefinitely trump those of political nationalism(with the conventionally anticipated outcome of sovereignty). Recognition bymultinational political organs, such as that of the European Union, of suchcategories as ‘ultraperipheral regions’ and ‘overseas countries and territories’demonstrates that the technocrats of the international community areincreasingly coming to terms with these otherwise anomalous entities.Specialists of nationalism need do no less.

Is it on account of Martinicans’ colonial past that their preoccupation withtheir administrative and juridical status vis-a-vis the Metropole borders on theobsessional?13 In part. But it is equally important to consider the extent towhich French political culture, undergirded still by Cartesian rigour andjurisprudential absolutism, itself reinforces the belief in an objective legalreality beyond a mere expression of popular will. Willy-nilly, by virtue of theirthree centuries of colonial and assimilationist association with France,Martinicans have ineluctably imbibed much of France’s political culture.For sure, Martinique has fashioned its own political subculture, too. But it isprecisely within the realm of law that Martinican autonomy has been weakest.The Martinican mindset has created precious little countervailing pressure toFrench legislative thinking: this, despite a post-1982 policy of administrativedecentralisation. Indeed, despite the decentralisation law of 1982,

. . . evolution of the institutions of Martinique and more generally the DOMs havebeen parallel to that undergone in the Metropole. Despite the breach in the Jacobintradition of France opened by this law, the central power has confirmed the trajectoryof total assimilation inaugurated in the weak of the Second World War (Sefil 2003:145–6).

Compounded by the high stakes of belonging to a European entity, it is littlewonder that even minor administrative readjustment becomes the occasionfor generalised political anguish. National notions of law are no less criticalthan local notions of nation.

For sure, philosophies of assimilation and theories of administration wouldhave little currency in the French West Indies today were not the economicincentives for remaining part of France (and thereby Europe) so high.Counter-colonialism, whereby the formerly colonised (or, more to the point,their descendants) benefit extensively and disproportionately from theirongoing institutional relationship with the former colonial power, is just asimportant. That French citizens of the overseas departments reject institu-tional change in favour of maintaining structures identical to the Metropoledemonstrates the power of counter-colonial thinking.

Even as classical (dare one say reactionary?) expressions of nationalismaggressively rear their head in post-Cold War Europe, post-colonialFrance provides thought-provoking counter-examples of peaceful and crea-tive accommodation with an erstwhile oppressive imperial power. For sure,



the relationship between Metropole and Overseas France remains proble-matic in several respects (particularly economic dependence and some linger-ing racial tension). Still, the continuing efforts to establish, within animperfect but nevertheless democratic procedural process, a mutually desir-able relationship between Metropolitan France and overseas componentsdeserves the attention of scholars and policy-makers alike. The actualadministrative outcome is arguably less important than the process itself.

Notes

1 As here and elsewhere, unless indicated otherwise, all translations are by this author.

2 During the colonial era the area was known as Pondichery, one of five comptoirs, or enclaves,

belonging to the French. The others were Karikal (now spelled Karaikal), Mahe (Mahe), Yanaon

(Yanam) and Chandernagor (Chandernagore).

3 Note that equality for emancipated slaves had been promulgated for over two decades in

Martinique before the ‘modernisation’ that Weber so thoroughly describes began.

4 Note that we are speaking of the Old Colonies – those founded in the seventeenth century and

are the monopolistic product of French colonialism, settlement, slavery and re-population. New

Colonies settled in the nineteenth century – such as Algeria and New Caledonia (currently an

overseas territory, with a scheduled referendum on independence) – contained indigenous

populations whose assimilation, despite French efforts, was less complete and less politically

untenable.

5 For a more detailed analysis of the Congress, see Miles 2003b: 230–5.

6 Here is the consultative question as it was officially phrased: ‘Do you approve the proposal of

the creation in Martinique of a territorial collectivity remaining subject to Article 73 of the

Constitution, and thus under the principle of legislative similarity with possibility of adaptations,

and replacing the department and region in the conditions provided for by this Article?’

7 Case in point: Improvement of a road that traversed municipal and departmental boundaries

would be held up until the technical agencies of the two jurisdictions concerned – department and

region – came to mutually agreed determinations.

8 The number of members for the Single Assembly was set at seventy-five. Seventy-one were to

be elected according to proportional representation in a single electoral district, with a minimal

threshold of five per cent. The remaining four seats were to go to the party receiving the highest

vote.

9 Some relevant excerpts:

Our assimilationist departmentalists are terrified by their difference which seems to

them incompatible with the French nation. In reality, do not Martinicans doubt that they

are truly French? The left, in control with its French political friends in power for twenty

years, is guilty of not having succeeded in, or even trying to, make disappear the . . .

blackmailing fear of being cut loose.

10 It is true, as even the Minister of the Overseas pointed out, that compared with recent

plebiscite-referenda votes (e.g. the 2000 one on reducing France’s presidential term from seven

years to five), the participation rate was respectable. As participation rates decline across the

board, however, ‘high’ turnouts tend to become trivially relativised.

11 In the ‘sister island’ of Guadeloupe, a similar consultative question was also rejected, but by a

much more massive margin (close to seventy-five per cent). There, the vote became tantamount to

a discrediting referendum on the island’s long-standing conservative leader, Madame Michaux-

Chevry. The populations of two small dependencies of Guadeloupe, St Barthelemy and Saint

Martin, also voted on 7 December and approved their respective consultative questions. Given

650 William Miles


that the history, politics and identity of each of these other islands are sufficiently distinct from

one another, we feel justified in restricting this study to Martinique alone.

12 For more on Marie-Jeanne, see Miles 2003a: 113–14, 122–3; see also Yang-Ting 2002.

13 Commenting on the quote which introduces this essay, it has been commented:

If we can call the white French metaphysical slaves, what shall we say for the descendants of

their slaves whose own physical emancipation and advancement have proceeded through

the vagaries of distantly conceived laws, statutes and decrees? . . . [I]f the French can be

philosophically awed by such a notion as ‘status,’ the overseas French may, quite under-

standably, be obsessed with it (Miles 1986: 206).

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Documents

When is a nation ‘a nation’? Identity-formation within a French West Indian people (Martinique)