Frantz Fanon

Martinique and the Second World War 

Frantz Fanon was born on the Caribbean  

island of Martinique, which was then a French 

 colony and is now a French département. His 

 father was a descendant of enslaved Africans  

and indentured Indians; his mother was of  

African and European descent, whose white 

 ancestors came from Strasbourg in 

 Alsace. Fanon's family was socio-economically 

 middle-class. They could afford the fees for  

the Lycée Schoelcher, then the most prestigious 

 high school in Martinique, where Fanon had the 

 writer Aimé Césaire as one of his teachers.F 

After France fell to the Nazis in 1940, Vichy  

French naval troops were blockaded on 

 Martinique. Forced to remain on the  

island, French sailors took over the government 

 from the Martiniquan people and established  

a collaborationist Vichy regime. In the face  

of economic distress and isolation under the 

 blockade, they instituted an oppressive 

 regime; Fanon described them as taking  

off their masks and behaving like "authentic 

 racists." Residents made many complaints of  

harassment and sexual misconduct by the  

sailors. The abuse of the Martiniquan people 

 by the French Navy influenced Fanon, reinforcing 

 his feelings of alienation and his disgust with  

colonial racism. At the age of seventeen, Fanon 

 fled the island as a "dissident" (the coined word 

 for French West Indians joining Gaullist 

 forces), traveling to British-controlled Dominica 

  to join the Free French Forces.F