Maggs Bros.

A French bill of lading records the shipping of plantation sugar, “huit barriques sucre brut” on the account and at the risk of “Madame Dagoud,” from the French Caribbean island colony of Martinique to the southern French port of Marseille. Dated 6 June 1749, the cargo was to be delivered at Marseille to the prominent mercantile company Roux et C[ompagn]ie.

Martinique was a cornerstone of French sugar production in the eighteenth-century, and thereby hugely important to the French economy. This is borne out by its strategic significance in the Seven Years War, when it was invaded and captured by the British in 1759. Indeed, in negotiating the Treaty of Paris which would end the war in 1763, France opted to regain Martinique and Guadeloupe, and to surrender Canada permanently to the British. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, 156,572 enslaved people were trafficked to Martinique, and slavery would not be abolished in the French Caribbean until 1848.