The island of Martinique was first charted by Columbus in 1493 but it was not until his fourth voyage in 1502 that Columbus first landed on the island.  The Spaniards never settled or colonized Martinique and in 1635 it became the first French colony in the Caribbean when a group of Frenchmen from Saint Cristopher led by Pierre Bélain d'Esnambuc arrived here settling in the region later known as Saint-Pierre.

In 1639, Daniel Trezel (1576-1641), a Dutch Protestant from Amsterdam, established as a merchant in Rouen and head of one of the first sugar refineries, was granted by the Compagnie des îles d'Amérique the exclusive right to sell sugar in Martinique for fifteen years by a notarial deed dated April 6th, with authorization to also establish himself in Guadeloupe, but without exclusivity.

"That the said Trezel alone, his heirs and assigns, and those who have power of attorney from them, may exercise this right."during the rest of this year and during the years 1640 to 1645, to make sugar in the said island of Martinique and that, for this purpose, the gentlemen of the Company and directors thereof shall forbid all the inhabitants of the said island and all others from making it during the said time or from planting sugar canes, under penalty of arbitrary fines and confiscation of the mills and goods and the said Tresel shall be subrogated to the right of the said Company to have the fines of the contraventions judged in his favor". That it shall be permitted to the said Tresel to have one or two habitations in the island of Gardeloupe with common rights of the other inhabitants of the islands with the power to cultivate sugar canes there and to transport those which are and shall be in the island of Martinique. That letters of recommendation will be given to the said Tresel in Martinique and Gardeloupe to further his plans, and that the Company's general clerk will be instructed to allocate suitable lands and locations for his enterprise. In consideration of the above, the said Tresel promises to the said managing lords to bring in, as soon as possible, men capable of cultivating sugarcane and who know how to make sugar , to work there without delay. This concession is made in consideration of the said Tresel's promise and promises by these presents to give and deliver to the said Company, for the duration of this concession, one-tenth of the sugar and other trade goods that he, his heirs, and assigns produce on the said island of Martinique, and in addition to the said one-tenth, one-fortieth to such persons as the said Company shall direct." "Furthermore, the said Tresel promises that he will not transport sugar or any other merchandise except to France and that he will not sell any to any foreigner..."

Trezel settled two of his sons, Samuel and François in Martinique, where they would establish the first sugar mill with an animal-powered mill. He commissioned a Rouen merchant, Daniel Rozée, to purchase one hundred slaves at 200 livres each. François remained in Martinique, where he became close to Governor General Lonvilliers de Poincy.

In 1654 a group of about two hundred fifty Dutch Jewish driven out of Brazil landed on Martinique.  The arrival of the expelled Dutch planters on Martinique dramatically changed the economy with the establishment of sugar plantations throughout the island thus creating a great demand for labor. Unlike tobacco, which depended a great deal on indentured labor and up to that moment the main crop on the island, sugar required a great amount of labor for which the indentured system was completely inadequate.  This demand was settled by importing captive Africans in large numbers to work the plantations.

As it happened in most islands of the West Indies, plantation owners rapidly substituted tobacco and cotton for sugar as their primary crops.  The result was that a colony that had once struggled, in a short period of time began generating enormous wealth.  Dominican missionary Jean Baptiste Labat [1] better known as Père Labat (1663–1738), left Paris and arrived in Martinique in 1694 where he administered the plantation called Fonds-Saint-Jacques at the foot of Mt. Pelée which had been granted in 1659 to the Dominican Order. He modernized and developed the industry in Martinique with new sugar mill designs and operational methods.  He developed a new process of distilling the juice extracted from sugarcane and producing rum today known as Rhum Agricole.  In 1790, Antoine Leroux-Préville purchased the four hundred acre estate and sugar refinery built by Père Labat and changed its name to Fonds-Préville. In 1845, Jean-Marie Martin bought the sugar factory at Fonds-Préville to convert it to a distillery that has since been making rum under his initials, Rhum J.M.

Throughout the years, Martinique came under British and French rule until 1814 when it was definitively restored to France.  In 1946 Martinique changed from being a colony and became a French départment et régions d'outre-mer and in 1974 was made a Région.  In 1992 Martinique became one of the nine Outermost Regions of the European Union.  French funding to Martinique has made the island's standards of living one of the highest in the Caribbean.  However, when measured by what Martinique actually produces, it is one of the poorer islands in the region.

According to the Martinique Ministry of Rum, during the second half of the 19th Century, there were twenty one sugar factories operating in Martinique.  After the damage caused by Hurricane San Magín in 1891, a big drought in 1894-95 and the destruction of the town of Saint-Pierre by the eruption of Mount Peleé on May 8, 1902, only a third of the twenty one sugar factories were in operation by the time WWI broke in 1914.

Today Sucrerie Le Gallion is the only sugar producing unit in Martinique.  ​Saint James Rhum made in Martinique since 1765 is said to be the third oldest spirit in the world behind Appleton of Jamaica and Mount Gay in Barbados.  Saint James Rum was acquired by the Rémy Cointreau Group in 1973 but sold to La Martiniquaise in 2003 who still owns the brand.  Saint James Rhum has received the distinction of being a Rhum Agricole.  Since 1996 rhum produced by Saint James Distillery receives the appelation d'origine contrôlée Martinique Agricultural Rum. 

Though not for the production of sugar, the Neisson family grow sugarcane in some one hundred acres of land that are either owned or leased surrounding their distillery on the Thieubert-Carbet Estate to produce a significant portion of the sugarcane juice needed in the production of their Neisson Rhum Agricole brand rums. Neisson is one of the few remaining distilleries not only in Martinique but in all of the West Indies that maintains direct control from field to bottle.

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[1] Père Labat is the namesake of the Poisson distillery’s rhum agricole in Marie-Galante, Guadeloupe. Since the early 1900s to this day, Rhum Père Labat is a Rhum Agricole produced from fresh-pressed sugarcane juice rather than molasses.  The distillery is the oldest on the island of Marie-Galante and houses one of of the oldest stills in the Caribbean. In 1722 Labat authored the "Nouveau voyage aux îles de l'Amérique" in which he provides a detailed, and often ethnocentric, look at the geography, natural history, and life in the West Indies, including a thorough description of the slave system he defended and used at his plantation. Labat returned to Europe in 1706 and continued his work within the Dominican order before dying in Paris in 1738.