Guided route · 5 stops

French rums, a map of empire

Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, French Guiana: four French geographical indications ten thousand kilometres from France. The distribution of sugar is that of the colonies, and the museum must say so.

Stop 01 of 05 · The frame

Four GIs, two oceans

Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Réunion: four French geographical indications spread over two oceans. None is less than six thousand kilometres from the Charentes, and all fall under the same register. The distribution of sugar is that of the colonies — the museum must say so at this scale, before going down into the detail.

Subject: Rhum de la Guadeloupe
Status: Geographical indication registered in the European Union
Place: Guadeloupe, France
Precision: Indicative marker — a point, and nothing more

Stop 02 of 05 · Island

Martinique

An island GI whose area and island do not coincide — but the database knows only a point for it. The set of outlines loaded for France stops at metropolitan France: the overseas territories are still waiting for their geometry, and the tour declares this instead of hiding it.

Subject: Rhum de la Martinique
Status: Geographical indication registered in the European Union
Place: Martinique, France
Precision: Indicative marker — a point, and nothing more

Rhum de la Martinique

Stop 03 of 05 · A GI the size of a factory

Rhum de sucrerie de la Baie du Galion

The denomination designates the output of a single sugar works, on the Atlantic coast of Martinique. A terroir can therefore be a building. No map at the scale of the corpus shows this; a label does.

Subject: Rhum de sucrerie de la Baie du Galion
Status: Geographical indication registered in the European Union
Place: Martinique, France
Precision: Indicative marker — a point, and nothing more

Rhum de sucrerie de la Baie du Galion

Stop 04 of 05 · Another ocean

Réunion

Nine thousand kilometres further on, in the southern hemisphere, the same family of products and a separate product specification. The distance the map has just travelled is the information: it is this distance that explains why these rums are not alike.

Subject: Rhum de la Réunion
Status: Geographical indication registered in the European Union
Place: Réunion, France
Precision: Indicative marker — a point, and nothing more

Rhum de la Réunion

Stop 05 of 05 · An area without a centre

Rhum des Antilles françaises

This denomination covers several islands at once. Its single point is a compromise that designates no real place: the dotted notation is an admission here, and the admission is worth more than false precision.

Subject: Rhum des Antilles françaises
Status: Geographical indication registered in the European Union
Place: French West Indies, France
Precision: Indicative marker — a point, and nothing more

Exit

What this route has shown, and what it has not

Entries crossed: 6 of 7
With no position in the corpus: 1
Entries outside any route: 18 across the whole Atlas

1 entry of this route appears in none of its stops. It can still be consulted through its own page.

Rhum des départements français d'outre-mer has no coordinates in the corpus: the map cannot show it, and nothing here replaces documentation work that remains to be done.