DOMAINE DE FONDS-SAINT-JACQUES
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Built on a plot of land granted in 1659 to the "frères Prêcheurs de l'Ordre de Saint-Dominique", it was founded on the site of the last battles between French colonists and Kalinagos. The Habitation subsequently enjoyed a long period of sugar production, notoriously transcribed in the "Nouveau Voyage aux îles de l'Amérique..." by Père Jean-Baptiste Labat, in 1722, who was appointed administrator of the Habitation from 1696. He made it both a place of singular enslavement and of remarkable innovation in sugar-making techniques.
A unique heritage site acquired by the Conseil Général in 1948, the Domaine de Fonds Saint-Jacques has been listed as a "Monument Historique" since 1980. As such, it includes one of the few Christian "slave cemeteries" in the Lesser Antilles. Today, the estate occupies a rectangular layout inherited from the 18th century, with a chapel, garden, industrial and conventual buildings, and the remains of sugar mills, a distillery, a mill and an aqueduct. It thus forms an ensemble combining four elements: historical time, which flows to the rhythm of the Saint-Jacques river; spirituality, associated with its religious and intangible dimension; the industry of the sugar house and factory; and, above all, the anthropological charge of a place built on dehumanization and resilience, now a source of respectful creations and multiple encounters.
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