Gérard Brasseur · 1977
Gérard Brasseur recommends the 1977 Martinique volume of the Atlas of French Overseas Departments, produced by Bordeaux’s Centre d’études de géographie tropicale with a team of thirty researchers. He praises its design, shared with the Réunion volume, and the quality of its information on the natural environment. He highlights L. Elisabeth’s substantial historical account of institutions, settlement and population changes, illegitimacy, and social struggles, alongside historical data in sections on population, landholding, sugar cane, and other crops. He regrets the absence of a place-name index and the restriction of historical cartography to a single 1734 map, while admiring that map’s evocative detail and noting the limits of its place names as statistical evidence.
Bernard Rouleau · 1978
This article reviews the Atlas of Martinique, published by the CNRS Center for Tropical Geography Studies as part of the French Overseas Departments Atlas series. The atlas, produced in collaboration with several university geography departments and the BRGM, contains 37 color maps, each accompanied by explanatory texts, statistical tables, cross-sections, and supplementary maps, comprehensively presenting the island's population, agriculture, land use, and other geographic information. The reviewer highly praises the atlas's visual presentation, cartographic quality, and informational richness, noting its successful use of diverse cartographic methods to clearly depict Martinique's major geographic issues.
