Guadeloupe

The islands were settled by Arawak and then Kalinago (Island Carib) peoples, who called Guadeloupe Karukera. France colonised it from 1635, clearing the land for sugar worked by enslaved Africans; the plantation economy made Guadeloupe valuable enough that France, at the 1763 Treaty of Paris, kept it and handed Britain all of Canada. Britain occupied the islands several times; in 1794 a French force under the revolutionary commissioner Victor Hugues retook the colony and abolished slavery, arming the freed population, before Napoleon reimposed it in 1802, crushing the resistance led by Louis Delgrès.

Slavery was abolished for good in 1848, largely through the campaigning of Victor Schoelcher. Indentured labourers from India were then brought to the estates, adding another strand to the population. Guadeloupe was governed as a colony until 1946, when it became an overseas department of France — fully part of the Republic, and later of the European Union — with French law, the franc and then the euro, and social benefits, alongside continuing debate about autonomy and the cost of living.

A defining modern grievance is chlordécone, a pesticide used on banana plantations from the 1970s until 1993 despite known toxicity, which has contaminated soil and water across much of Guadeloupe and Martinique for generations and is the subject of long-running legal and political battles. A weeks-long general strike in 2009 over "profitation" — profiteering and inequality — and further unrest in 2021 have marked the relationship with Paris.

Guadeloupean identity is Creole: French in language of instruction and institutions, but African, Indian, and Caribbean in music, food, faith, and family life. Gwoka — a family of drum rhythms, call-and-response singing, and dance that grew out of the enslaved population's music — is central to the culture and is on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, performed at léwòz gatherings and festivals.

Carnival is the great annual event, months of neighbourhood groupes à peau (skin-drum bands) and groupes à caisse building to Mardi Gras. Catholicism is the majority faith, blended in places with African-derived practice, and there are Hindu temples serving the Indian-descended community. Zouk, the dance music pioneered by the Guadeloupe-Martinique band Kassav', went global from here.

Family, the Sunday meal, the market, and community festivals organise social life, and Creole proverbs, storytelling, and a strong oral tradition remain alive.

Nearly 400,000 people live in Guadeloupe, most on Grande-Terre and around Pointe-à-Pitre, the commercial hub, with the smaller administrative capital of Basse-Terre on the volcanic island. The population is ageing and slowly declining, as many young Guadeloupeans move to mainland France for study and work.

The economy runs on the public sector, tourism, EU and state transfers, and agriculture — bananas, sugar cane and rum, melons, coffee, and vanilla. Structural unemployment is high, the cost of living well above the mainland, and the islands depend heavily on imports. Water supply is a recurring problem due to an ageing, leaking network.

Daily life is French in its administration and Caribbean in its rhythm, shaped by the heat, the sea, the family, and the long shadow of the chlordécone question.

Guadeloupean cooking is Creole and generously spiced. Colombo — a curry of chicken, goat, or fish with a local spice blend brought by Indian labourers — is a staple, as is court-bouillon de poisson (fish in a tomato and lime broth) and bébélé, a Marie-Galante dish of tripe, breadfruit, and green banana. Accras de morue (salt-cod fritters) and boudin créole (spiced blood sausage) are the classic starters.

The lolo, a simple roadside eatery, grills fish and chicken with rice and red beans, and the markets sell bokit (a fried-bread sandwich), fresh spices, and tropical fruit. Blaff, fricassée de chatrou (octopus), and matété (crab and rice, eaten at Easter) are other classics, with tourment d'amour coconut tarts from Les Saintes for dessert.

Ti-punch — rhum agricole, cane syrup, and lime — is the ritual aperitif, and Guadeloupe's agricultural rums (Damoiseau, Bologne, Séverin, Montebello, Bielle on Marie-Galante) are well regarded, alongside shrubb (orange-peel rum liqueur) at Christmas.

Basse-Terre, the western wing, is mountainous and green, dominated by the Guadeloupe National Park and the active La Soufrière volcano at 1,467 metres, which can be climbed to its steaming, sulphurous summit. The park also holds the three-tiered Carbet Falls, rainforest trails, the cross-island Route de la Traversée, and, on the west coast, the Jacques Cousteau underwater reserve around the Pigeon islets for snorkelling and diving. Deshaies has the botanical garden and the beach of Grande-Anse.

Grande-Terre, the eastern wing, is flat limestone and sugar country with the best beaches — Sainte-Anne, Saint-François, and the calm lagoon of the Gosier hotel strip — ending at the dramatic sea cliffs of Pointe des Châteaux. Pointe-à-Pitre has the Mémorial ACTe, a major museum of slavery and the slave trade built on the site of an old sugar factory.

The dependencies are a highlight: Les Saintes, a short ferry ride south, has one of the most beautiful bays in the world, the hilltop Fort Napoléon, and Terre-de-Haut's fishing boats at anchor; Marie-Galante is a round, quiet island of windmills, ox-carts, rum distilleries, and empty beaches; and La Désirade is a slender, arid ridge with a real end-of-the-line feel.