Protestantism in the french west indies (1626-1946)

The colonising of the French West Indies began at the outer edges of the territory occupied by the Caribs or Kalinagos with the creation of the Compagnie de l'Isle de Saint-Christophe. The French, urged on by Cardinal Richelieu who was advised by Pierre Belain d’Esnambuc, and the English, driven by Thomas Warner, decided to take possession of the island and to divide up the territory between them according to the people they found there. The English occupied the centre, and the French the two outer regions. According to the rules of the Company, the French had to spread Catholicism among the Amerindians by bringing priests and forbidding the practice of any other religion. Significant numbers of the inhabitants of French descent there, however, were of Protestant faith, yet the same constraints were imposed when the Compagnie des Iles de l’Amérique was created in 1635 to continue the work. The Protestant colonisers who had been there from the start were led by the nobleman Le Vasseur, and had negotiated their rights. But in 1640, in order to rid himself of them, the Governor General de Poincy organised an expedition to Tortuga Island, which was run as a ‘Hugenot Republic’, and which lay at the origins of the French colonisation of Santo Domingo.

There was significant Protestant emigration to the West Indies, fostered by the involvement of that community in maritime trade and banking. Many of those who went came from Hugenot parishes. Before the Edict of Fontainebleau was enforced, the colonisers came from La Rochelle and the region around, then from Dieppe, Bordeaux and the South of France.

Up until 1654, the Dutch who were settled in the towns - Basseterre on St Kitts, Basse-terre Island in Guadeloupe, and St-Pierre in Martinique - were content simply to trade. They gave credit, with small profit-margins made up for by the large tonnage of merchandise and the returns on it. This questionable business, focused on Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Middelburg and Vlissingen and supported by 2,000 ocean-going ships, caused the collapse of the companies that held monopolies. In 1654 some of these, expelled from the Northeast Region of Brazil by the Portuguese, established themselves in the French islands, introducing there the plantation system for the production of sugar and rum (guildive: Kill Devil) using enslaved African workers. They were members of the Dutch Reformed Church and joined with the local Protestants to form a minority group with considerable influence in matters of trade, agriculture and administration. Dutch trade was forbidden, to great popular dissatisfaction, but continued with Sint Eustatius, growing to such a degree that in 1672 the French King, Louis XIV, asked local Governors not to apply the measures which had been taken against Dutch settlers in France. 

Colbert looked for support from the Protestants when the French West India Company was founded in 1664. The first administrators, Du Buc in Martinique, Rouvelet in Guadeloupe and Pierre le Royer on St Kitts, together with their subordinate staff, all had close links with Protestant financiers.

The Protestants were also partially embedded in government. A number of Governors came from Protestant families: M. de Baas, Governor General from 1667 to 1677, and his nephew M. de l’Herpinière, who became Governor of Guadeloupe on 14 September 1677 after the death of M. du Lion; Constant d’Aubigné was Governor of Marie-Galante; Jean-Baptiste de Gennes, who from 1699 to 1702 was the last French Governor of Saint-Christophe, remained faithful to his religion. Many militia leaders and certain members of the Supreme or Upper Councils were also members of the Protestant community. In 1687 in Guadeloupe there were eighteen companies of militiamen, six of which were led by Protestants. This situation gave rise to questions as to the loyalty of the defence forces under enemy attack.

Worship could not take place in public: it was conducted in private homes. In Saint-Pierre the Protestants came together in an inn. Only one pastor is known for sure: Charles de Rochefort, chaplain to Le Vasseur and author of an Histoire naturelle de l’Amérique (1667). One Neau de Baie-Mahault showed his allegiance when he emigrated to North America with the intention of converting Amerindians. At Capesterre in Guadeloupe a woman called Semith started baptising children before they were presented to the parish priest for registration as Catholics. The priest, who was not taken in, denounced her.

Catholic missionaries joined the struggle against the presence of the Protestants. As long as Colbert was in office they met with no success. But from the end of the Franco-Dutch War in 1678 the Jesuits became much more active, and attacks more frequent. A blanket condemnation of Protestants was issued in Martinique and in Saint-Christophe, forcing them to behave with great discretion. A series of memoranda addressed directly to the King demanded that the Jews be expelled and the Hugenots forcibly converted. The last of these triggered a letter from the King obliging Protestants in the West Indies to renounce their faith. Initially the Edict of Fontainebleau was not applied to the letter in the French West Indies, but the Edict of 1685, wrongly known as the Black Code, deals with the problem of religion in its opening clauses.

In his Order of 24 September 1683 and the Memorandum of 12 April 1685, the King reiterated that only the Catholic religion was authorised.

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was marked by the arrival of deportees selected from among the ‘stubborn’ Protestants in French prisons; 356 men and women scattered across all the islands escaped with the help of the West Indian Protestants, and in his letter of 30 September 1686 the King ordered that the latter should be obliged to renounce their faith. On 6 March 1687 the Governor General acknowledged the letter and reported on the situation. He had summoned the Fathers Superior of the missions to ask their opinion, and informed the individual Governors that he was about to arrive. The Martinique Hugenots were brought together on 17 March 1687, and informed of the King’s orders. Then it was the turn of Guadeloupe, where all the heads of family were summoned. On 26 March the Governor of Saint-Christophe, M. de Saint-Laurens, had tried, without any success, to close the borders. The local Protestants gathered together their belongings (slaves, stoves) and went over to the English side en masse. The Protestants of the French West Indies emigrated to nearby islands under Dutch, English or Danish rule, and to North America: Charleston, New York… The families of landowners left one of their members behind to go through the formalities of recanting, so as to safeguard their property until such time as it could be sold. It was not long before flight for religious reasons was seen as equivalent to death, and the family member left behind ‘inherited’ the abandoned property.

The Protestant community was drastically reduced in size, and endogamous marriage contributed to the growth in the wealth of the families that had stayed behind. In 1711 a census carried out by the parish priests portrays a community reduced to the bare minimum. The ‘stubborn believers’ were few in number. The islands, with the exception of Saint-Martin, had become Catholic.

After the Seven Years’ War, the French decided to repopulate Saint-Martin. They accepted non-Catholic inhabitants: Dutch and English Creoles from Saba, Sint Eustatius and Sint Maarten, Anguilla, Nevis and St Kitts, who settled there with their slaves. Those who were members of the Reformed Church (as was the case of the Dutch and the descendants of French emigrés), like the Anglicans and the Presbyterians, all crossed the border to practise their religion, or travelled to neighbouring islands for christenings and marriages. Their slaves were ministered to by the parish priest.

By signing the Edict of 7 November 1787 the King restored civil status to Protestants in France, and then extended those arrangements to the colonies by a further Edict in November 1788. Apart from on Saint-Martin, very few Protestant families had managed to retain their original faith.

With the Revolution, the problem of religion was no longer at the forefront. In Guadeloupe and its dependencies, all religious worship was forbidden by Victor Hugues, yet it continued uninterrupted in occupied Martinique. Churches were re-opened in 1802 and worship was reinstated according to the Concordat. The few priests showed no concern for small islands like Saint-Martin, where slaves were left to their own devices while their masters had maintained their own ecclesiastical arrangements. In 1819 the (Methodist) English Wesleyan Mission dispatched a lay preacher to Sint Maarten, the Dutch part of Saint-Martin. Among his converts were also slaves from the French part. From 1830, as a result of an influx of members of the clergy, a small Catholic community was re-established, but the majority of the population remained Methodist. When slavery was abolished a French pastor, Louis Frossard, was sent over, but as he belonged to the Reformed Church whereas the majority of his flock were Methodists, he was faced by insurmountable difficulties. He went back to Guadeloupe in 1856 and tried to create a Reformed Church there, but died on Basse-Terre on 29 December 1873, and no one came to replace him. 

When, in 1911, the separation of Churches and State was applied to the French West Indies, the Catholic Church, which was very well organised, kept a majority presence in the various islands thanks to its clergy, its press and its social work. After the end of the second World War, new religious faiths began to appear. In 1946, the episcopal archives report the presence of a few Seventh Day Adventists, and thereafter adherents of other denominations originating in North America began to arrive. The majority of the population, however, remains Catholic.

Published in december 2024