Indo-Martiniquais

Migration history

In 1851 the Martinique authorities, seeking to replace former slave labourers who had abandoned plantation work on being given their liberty, recruited several thousand labourers from the Indian French colonial settlements of Madras, Pondichéry, Chandernagor and Karaikal. Workers were offered free passage and pay in exchange for serving a five-year period of labour. Despite initial experiences of racial discrimination and labour exploitation, many of the immigrants were subsequently well-integrated into the population, and by the late 20th century the labourers' descendants were broadly assimilated into Martiniquais culture.

The past two decades have seen Indo-Martiniquais people increasingly asserting the distinctively Indian aspects of their heritage (a phenomenon known as "indianité"). People of Indian descent have paid renewed attention to the history and culture of India, and local groups have established contact with peoples of Indian descent from throughout the Caribbean and further afield. One token of this has been the recent revival of a traditional Hindu annual mela on the island, sustained by the Hindu temples and shrines that were introduced by the migrant labourers and remain operational today. There have also been Indians, specifically Sindhis, migrating to the island in recent years, setting up businesses such as gifts shops.