History
Unlike the other islands in the French crown, the Spanish actually attempted to colonize Guadeloupe - twice - in the 1500s, after Columbus discovered its fertile soil during his second New World voyage. They were assailed both times by menacing Caribs, and it took the French , who arrived in 1635, to establish the French West Indies' first capital a few years later, at Basse-Terre . Their successful implementation of slavery by the 1670s caught British attention, who strove to overtake the island several times in the mid-1700s, and succeeded in occupying it from 1759 to 1763, when they built up the harbour at Pointe-a-Pitre and expanded sugarcane trade markets to North America. The 1763 Paris Treaty returned Guadeloupe to France but the British invaded again in 1794. The French responded by sending in troops led by black nationalist Victor Hugues , who launched a reign of terror by freeing and arming local slaves, killing hundreds of royalists and attacking American ships; not surprisingly, the US declared war on France. Napoleon reinstituted order by appointing a governing general who restored slavery in 1802. Peace was not to endure for long, however, as the British were still keen on controlling the fiefdom, and they continued to manage parts of the island between 1810 and 1816, when the Vienna Treaty ended their attempts for good. Slavery wasn't actually abolished in the French West Indies until 1848, after a dogged anti-slavery campaign mounted by French cabinet minister Victor Schoelcher . Since then, the only real issue has been Guadeloupe's status within the French government. The promise of political decentralization in the late 1900s gave birth to pro-independence uprisings, some occurring as recently as 1999, when Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyana (in South America) joined forces to sign the Basse-Terre Declaration seeking greater autonomy from the French government.
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