The French Caribbean and the Challenge of Neoliberal Globalisation: The Silent Death of Tricolore Development?

• Author: Matthew Louis Bishop
• Pages: 119-145

119

- THE FRENCH CARIBBEAN & THE CHALLENGE OF NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISATION

The French Caribbean and

the Challenge of Neoliberal

Globalisation:

The Silent Death of Tricolore Development?

MATTHEW LOUIS BISHOP

INTRODUCTION

The territories of Martinique and Guadeloupe1 are at once

Caribbean, French and European. Situated just a few miles from the

neighbouring West Indian island mini-states of Saint Lucia, Dominica

and Antigua and Barbuda, their geographical proximity is belied by

the interminable division of language, history and their politico-juridical

location within another state and another continent. In contrast to the

independence achieved by their Anglophone counterparts in the West

Indies, the outcome of their long colonisation by France was their

complete incorporation, in 1946, into the French state as Départements

d’Outre Mer (DOM), with essentially the same status as the

Départements in the metropole. Led by Aimé Césaire, the movement

towards ‘decolonisation by integration’ was completed soon after the

Second World War, and the sixty years since have witnessed an

interdependent process of regional elites colluding with Paris to effect

the islands’ social and economic development while simultaneously

embedding ever deeper their relationship within the political economy

of the French state (Daniel, 2001a; Réno, 2001).

As is well-remarked, such a state of affairs has resulted in the

dramatic development of Martinique and Guadeloupe, which far

outstrips that of their immediate neighbours in the English-speaking

Eastern Caribbean with whom they share geographical contiguity and

a broadly analogous history of European colonialism. As politico-

economically contiguous Départements of France, Martinique and

Guadeloupe enjoy a material standard of living concomitant with their

7.

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- GOVERNANCE IN THE NON-INDEPENDENT CARIBBEAN -

effective status within the so-called ‘developed’ world and the European

Union (EU). However, such a state of affairs does exact a heavy cost in

terms of an unresolved psychological dependency upon the ‘mother

country’, and, as such, the cliché that Martinique and Guadeloupe

evoke both envy and pity from their neighbours rings somewhat true

(Hintjens, 1991).

The development of these two Caribbean islands is inextricably

entwined with their status as Overseas Departments of France. Since

the colonial era, on account of the external organisation of their

economies, French Antillean society has ‘always been in a situation of

total dependency on the mainland’ (Giraud, 1991, 235). The

Départementalisation law of 1946 had the effect of institutionalising

and legitimising this dependency, which in turn became the quid pro

quo of the enormous financial support from Paris (Hintjens, 1991;

Miles, 2001, 49) that has underpinned the spectacular progress

experienced by Martinique and Guadeloupe in the ensuing decades.

Since 1946 successive French governments have funded the relationship

lavishly, and they have all regarded the question of political status as

closed, even if at times – such as in 1968 or with the independence of

the Anglophone Eastern Caribbean in the 1970s – it may have been

prised open (Payne, 1984, 100). In any case, given the theoretical

construction of the ‘One and Indivisible’ French Republic, once these

territories were assimilated, as far as Paris was concerned, there existed

no question surrounding their constitutional status which could

logically be asked.

In practical terms, any impulse that did exist towards independence

or significant reconfiguration of the status quo was largely extinguished

by the Mitterrand government’s extensive Décentralisation reforms,

which returned significant power to local actors in the 26 newly created

Conseils Régionaux throughout France. This constitutional arrangement

has governed the relationship between Paris and the Overseas

Departments since the early 1980s, and has both provided the arena

in which Martinican and Guadeloupean ‘national’ politics are expressed,

and the mechanism through which the considerable EU Structural

Funds to which the islands are entitled have been dispersed.

It is, however, the contention of this chapter that this era of Tricolore

Development, characterised as it has been by huge injections of finance

from Paris, and latterly Brussels, is now coming to an end. We identify