The Angola Village of Enslaved Workers at La Montagne Plantation, Saint Kitts, 1639–1665

This article explores the origin and evolution of a village of enslaved workers called “Angole,” or Angola, located at La Montagne, a 17th-century sugar plantation in Saint Peter Basseterre Parish, Saint Kitts. La Montagne served as the governor’s residence for the island’s French sector and became a major component of the largest sugar-plantation system in the French Antilles. It was managed initially as a capitalist enterprise by Philippe Lonvilliers de Poincy between 1639 and 1660 under French ministries, trading companies, and the Knights of Malta. Newly discovered documentation, combined with site landscape data, defines Angola’s two developmental phases. The first consisted of a European-designed complex of frame and masonry buildings destroyed in a fire possibly set by its residents. The second phase involved replacing this with successive, shifting village locations following the plantation’s defensive and agricultural needs, built in vernacular Afro-Caribbean style.