Equiano refers to both Martinique and Guadeloupe in his description of his peregrinations around the West Indies. They are both French islands, each with the legal status of "overseas department," or
"departement d'outre-mer " (DOM). A French "department" is the equivalent of a state in the U.S. Martinique is perhaps best known as the birthplace of Napoleon's Empress Josephine,
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| Coronation of Josephine, by David. <http://www.apeuropeanlahs.org/resources/TheNapoleonicAge_files/josephine.jpg> |
and to students of French literature or post-colonial politics,
Aimé Cesaire, poet and politican, elected to the French National Assembly in 1945.
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| Aimé Cesaire |
Both islands were passed from the Spanish to the French to the British and back again, and Guadeloupe even once to Sweden. Interestingly, along the way, Guadeloupe was ceded to France in the Treaty of Paris after the Seven Years War, in exchange for French colony of Quebec in North America, which at that time included Detroit and Michigan. Both Martinique and Guadeloupe were highly prosperous sugar islands, along with the French Haiti before the Haitian revolution which ended in 1804.
