Short answers, pulled from the story.
Christopher Columbus arrived in Guadeloupe in November 1493 and renamed the archipelago after the Virgin Mary shrine in Guadalupe, Extremadura. The original name given by the Arawak people was the Island of Beautiful Waters. This renaming decision would echo through four centuries of French rule.
During the Battle of Matouba on the 28th of May 1802, Louis Delgrès and his followers chose mass suicide by exploding their gunpowder stores rather than submit to the reestablishment of slavery. This event was a pivotal moment in Caribbean history that demonstrated the island's population would fight to the death for freedom. The French response to the uprising was brutal and culminated in this specific battle.
La Grande Soufrière is the active volcano in Guadeloupe that last erupted in 1976. This eruption displaced 73,600 people and captured the drama of the evacuation in Werner Herzog's documentary La Soufrière. It remains the highest peak in the Lesser Antilles on the mountainous volcanic island of Basse-Terre.
The 2009 strikes in Guadeloupe were caused by high unemployment rates, the high cost of living, and demands for higher wages and better living conditions. The situation escalated into a 44-day violent confrontation after union leader Jacques Bino was shot and killed. The strikes highlighted the disconnect between the wealth of the French Republic and the reality of life in the overseas department.
The Black Code of 1685 imposed forced conversion on newly arrived slaves and the baptism of the older ones, leading to a rapid fashion among the slaves to adopt the religion as a spiritual refuge. This syncretism allowed enslaved people to safeguard some of their African beliefs and customs, creating a unique religious culture that persists to this day. The code required owners to provide enslaved people with two suits of cloth or four alders of cloth a year.
The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763 and returned Guadeloupe to France in exchange for the Canadian colonies. This decision highlighted the economic value of the island, which was considered more valuable than the Canadian colonies. The period also saw the rise of Pointe-à-Pitre as a major harbor and the opening of markets in British America to Guadeloupean sugar.