The Convict and the Colonel

Explores how a village in Martinique has been transformed since the 1960s into a welfare-based economy, and how the influence of legendary convict Medard Aribot, a symbol of anti-colonial sentiment, has diminished in the rush to modernity

A subtle, personal, and possibly overburdened interpretation of colonialism's recent impact on Martinique. To convey the pricecultural assimilationpaid by residents of Martinique for modernization, Price (Anthropology/William & Mary Coll.) adopts an indirect approach. By examining a particular event and person in terms of their reality and the subsequent memories of them, he tracks a reconstruction of social consciousness. The ``war'' at Diamant in 1925 pitted native and reformist interests against the economic and political elite in a clash over efforts to rig an election that ended in violence. Medard Aribot, born in 1901, went from a marginal life as an artist and Robin Hoodstyle thief to lengthy imprisonment in a French penal colony as a result of the Diamant incident and then back to his original life until his death. While Price found, when he arrived in Martinique in the 1960s, that both Diamant and Medard constituted ``powerful historical metaphors,'' by the 1990s memories were dim and distorted. Aggressive modernization during the intervening years had changed perceptions of the past as well as living conditions. Price's explanation is that political and economic integration into modern Europe required ``postcarding'' history to fit a European view of colonialism consistent with ``a broadly participatory rather than contestational political practice in the present.'' This conclusion is potentially powerful, and even Price's lengthy acounts of his anthropological exploits are interesting. Unfortunately, throughout the volume we always seem to be circling the subject rather than grasping it, adding layers of meaning through hint and metaphor. The result is more intriguing than persuasive, and it's not clear that personal observations can support a conclusion of this weight. In the end, reading this book is like viewing a work of abstract modern art: You're not quite sure what it all means, but you have no doubt that something profound is in there somewhere. (2 color and 100 b&w illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Part ethnography, part oral history, and part autobiography, this book explores the reinterpretation of Martinique's history through the personal and collective memory of several generations of its inhabitants. Price (history and anthropology, Coll. of William and Mary) brilliantly weaves together archival material, interviews, and long-term ethnography to describe the political corruption that led to the 1925 election-day massacre of ten people, including one of the candidates. In the second and third chapters, Price draws on similar sources to tell the story of Medard Aribot, a "Robin Hood" folk artist who lives in a cave and is later banished to Devil's Island penal colony for "impertinence." We also read Price's own story, that of a young anthropologist who first began fieldwork in Martinique in 1962 and who witnessed the modernization of the island and its people. Throughout his engrossing narrative, Price reminds us that historical events are constantly reinvented and that the failing memories of subsequent generations may often turn history into legend and folklore. This book reads like a novel and is required for anyone interested in Caribbean studies. For large public libraries and anthropology and history collections.?Jim Woodman, Boston Athenaeum
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Price's history of Martinique from the 1920s to the present is definitive, and the tiny island's history during French colonial times is best described as, well, bizarre. We meet Medard, a large and powerful man in defiance of the bogus "elections" being held during the 1920s; as his ultimate act of rebellion, he carves a life-size model of the colonel who acts as governor of the island. There is a vivid description of the election-day riot when the statue is displayed, and the description of Medard's subsequent sentencing and incarceration on Devil's Island is nothing less than hair-raising. Price utilizes many primary sources in his research, in particular drawing on diary entries of one Philibert Larcher, still active in Martinique politics many years later. Meticulously researched by an author who actually lives there, this look at the cockeyed Martinique of the twenties is alternately fascinating and convoluted. (Price's juxtapositioning of Larcher's diary with "official" government accounts is interesting but difficult to read.) Joe Collins