Calendrier pour l’année 1807

This pocket almanac, likely owned by a merchant in early nineteenth-century Martinique, was a commercial tool that allowed its reader quickly to calculate values in local (gourdes) and metropolitan (livres) currency. It also provided information related to the daily functioning of trade, such as the hours of sunrise and sunset and Catholic festival days. There are few surviving copies of this kind of printed ephemera, especially in the Caribbean; it thus provides a vital window onto commercial practices after France re-established control of Martinique following British wartime occupation (which lasted until 1802).