Abstract EN:

Over the last three decades, the rum undustry in Martinique has gone through a deep change which has, at various levels, affected its human, material, technical, economic and spatial components. When it got the "appellation contrôlée" in 1996, the agricultural Martinican rum became a reference. As a result, it can insist upon the specificities of its native soil, its geografic roots, and also upon the heritage of a tradition and a know-how which is wholly codified today by the AOC legislation. This seal of quality turns an ordinary colonial produce into a special, high standard liquor, which confers to Martinique, formerly "sugar island", then "rum island", a new status based on the specificity and quality of its rum production. Today, the rum industry is at the heart of a true cultural and economic dynamic wich can be expressed in three points: first, the rum production meets the demand insufficiently, second, some planters have returned to the cultivation of sugar cane to make up to the lack of raw material, third, the productions units are more performant and have also become recreational sites for the tourist and local population. Moreover, due to the important commercial flows generated by exports, the rum is confronted with the issues of globalisationand is in keeping with a system of space that fit on the local, national and international scale. Therefore, this research aims at studying what is at stake in the processes of qualification of agricultural rum, at determining the assets anconstraints of this specific label and at measuring its spatial and economic consequences at the various scale.