Les Békés en Guadeloupe

Glossary

In Guadeloupe and throughout the Antilles, béké is both a noun and an adjective: one speaks of a béké for a person, just as one can speak of a béké population or a béké culture.

The békés are the descendants of the first colonists, those nobles who settled in the Antilles in the 17th century to restore their reputation or on the king's orders. They were first called "créoles," but this term is today understood inversely as designating the black population of the Antilles. Several etymologies are put forward to explain this term, some of which seem fanciful: the "blancs des quais" (whites of the docks) who controlled the departure of goods from their plantation, those who often said "Eh bien quoi?" (Well, what?), an abbreviation of blanc-créole (BK), or a very real word from the Igbo language of Nigeria meaning "white."

The békés, that is to say the planters, the "maîtres-case" (masters of the house), currently represent 1% to 2% of the population of the Antilles. The few who remain in Guadeloupe descend from those who escaped the guillotine of the revolution without having needed to take refuge outside French territory: in Sweden, on the island of Saint-Barthélemy, or in England on the island of Saint-Martin and in Martinique.

One should not confuse the béké with the blanc-pays, whose family has been present in the Antilles for several generations without descending from the first colonists. These are, for example, descendants of "petits-blancs" (or "blancs-goyaves"): soldiers, sailors, young people who came to seek a better situation than in metropolitan France and who worked as laborers (the "engagés" who had a 36-month contract), foremen, or plantation overseers (managers), or the few better-off who settled as merchants, teachers, notaries, lawyers, or doctors. Exile to the Antilles was also a choice offered to repeat offenders from various backgrounds, men or women, as an alternative to prison or death. Some blancs-pays also descend from English or Dutch people tired of migrating from island to island with the conquests or diplomatic negotiations.

The oldest blancs-pays are often, nowadays, wrongly called békés. But among them, planters are a minority in Guadeloupe. Most are small entrepreneurs, simple employees; there are also unemployed people among them.