The Convict and the Colonel

The life of Medard Aribot of Martinique óartist, convict, madman, legend óspans much of the twentieth century. Born in 1901 when slavery was a living memory, Medard was allegedly sent to a French penal colony for carving a bust of a colonial official that rioters hoisted overhead during a 1925 massacre. Today, the peculiar house he built for himself late in life is a major tourist attraction in Martinique.

With an exciting combination of scholarship and storytelling, award-winning anthropologist Richard Price takes us on a search for the real Medard. Using the Diamant massacre and the life of Aribot as emblems of Martinique's transition from a colonial society to a modern society, the author shows how the fishing village he encountered on his first trip to Martinique in 1962 has been transformed by a heavily assisted welfare-based consumer economy. And Medard, whose life was once a subversive symbol of anticolonial sentiment, has been silenced by contemporary myths . . . or has he?

Part historical mystery, part biography, part cultural studies, The Convict and the Colonel is a fascinating story of a society in transition and the role of the prophetic figure in historical memory.


"Price quotes a phrase from colleague Sidney Mintz about the kind of anthropology that is 'at the fault line between the large and the little.' In this intellectually daring book, he gets as close to the fault line as possible."

--Publishers Weekly

Richard Price is professor of anthropology at William and Mary College and author of several books, including the award-winning Alabi's World. He has lived intermittently in Martinique for more than twenty years.