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History of Martinique

This is a page on the history of the island of Martinique.

100–1450
The island was originally inhabited by Arawak and Carib peoples. Circa 130 AD, the first Arawaks are believed to have arrived from South America. In 295 A.D, an eruption of Mount Pelée resulted in the decimation of the island's population. Around 400 A.D, the Arawaks returned and repopulated the island. Around 600 A.D, the Caribs arrived. They exterminated the Arawaks and proceeded to settle on the island over the next few centuries.

1450–1600
Christopher Columbus charted the island in 1493, making the region known to European interests, but it was not until June 15, 1502, on his fourth voyage, that he actually landed, leaving several pigs and goats on the island. However, the Spaniards ignored the island as other parts of the New World were of greater interest to them.

17th century
In 1635, Cardinal Richelieu created the Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique (Company of the Isles of America, the successor to the Compagnie de Saint-Christophe). The company contracted with Messrs l'Olive and Duplessis to occupy and govern on its behalf the Caribbean islands belonging to the French crown. This led on September 1, 1635, to Pierre Bélain d'Esnambuc landing on Martinique with eighty to one hundred French settlers from Saint Cristophe. They met some resistance that they were able to dispatch quickly because of their far superior weaponry and armor. They settled in the northwestern region that later became known as St. Pierre at the mouth of the Roxelane River, where they built Fort Saint Pierre. The first governor was Jean Dupont.

The following year, d'Esnambuc fell ill and passed the command of the settlement to his nephew, Jacques Dyel du Parquet. At this time the colony's population numbered some 700 men. The settlers cleared the land around St. Pierre to grow crops. They grew manioc and potatoes to live on and rocou, indigo, tobacco, and later cacao and cotton, for export. French and foreign merchants frequently came to the island to buy these exotic products, transforming Martinique into a modestly prosperous colony. The colonists also established another fort, Fort Saint Louis in 1638. This fort, like Fort Saint Pierre, was little more than a wooden stockade. In 1640, the fort was improved to include a ditch, high stone walls and 26 cannons.

Over the next quarter of a century the French established full control of the island. They systematically killed the fiercely resisting Caribs as they expanded, forcing the survivors back to the Caravelle Peninsula in the Cabesterre (the eastern side of the island).

Although labor-intensive, sugar was a lucrative product to trade, and cultivation on Martinique soon focused only on growing and trading sugar. In 1685, King Louis XIV proclaimed "Le Code Noir", which aimed to provide a legal framework for the removal of Africans from their homeland and their transport to work as slaves on the French sugar plantations. Ever since, a strong theme of Martiniquan culture has been creolization or interaction between the French colonial settlers, known locally as békés, and the Africans they imported. For over two hundred years, slavery, and slave revolts, would be a major influence on the economy and politics of the island.

The French colonial settlers were peasants attracted by propaganda promising fortune and a life under the sun. The "volunteers" were indentured servants who had to work for their master for three years, after which they were promised their own land. However, the tiring work and hot climate resulted in few of the workers surviving their three years, with the result that constant immigration was necessary for maintaining the workforce. Still, under the directorship of du Parquet, Martinique's economy developed as it exported products to France and the neighboring English and Dutch colonies. In 1645, the Sovereign council was established with several powers, among them the right to grant titles of nobility to families in the islands. In 1648, the Company of the Isles of America started to wind up its affairs and in 1650 du Parquet bought the island.

In 1650 Father Jacques du Tetre built a still for converting the waste from the sugarcane mills into molasses, which became a major export industry.

In 1654, du Parquet allowed 250 Dutch Jews, who were fleeing Brazil following the Portuguese taking back their territory in that colony, to settle Martinique, where they engaged in the sugar trade. This was by far the most sought after product in Europe and the crop soon became Martinique's biggest export.

After the death of du Parquet, his widow ruled on behalf of his children until 1658, when Louis XIV resumed sovereignty over the island, paying an indemnity of £120,000 to the du Parquet children. At this time, Martinique's population numbered some 5,000 settlers and a few surviving Carib Indians. The Caribs were eventually exterminated or exiled in 1660.

In 1658, Dominican Fathers built an estate at Fonds Saint-Jacques. From 1693 to 1705, this was the home of Père Labat, the French Dominican priest who improved the distillery. A colorful character, he was also an explorer, architect, engineer, and historian, and fought as a soldier against the English.

In 1664, Louis transferred the island, this time to the newly established Compagnie des Indes Occidentales. The next year, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, a Dutch fleet under Admiral Michiel de Ruyter retired to Martinique to refit after the fleet's indecisive encounter with an English force off Barbados. Two years later a hurricane devastated Martinique and Guadelope, killing some 2,000 people. This was the first of several natural disasters that would devastate the population of Martinique over the next few centuries.

In 1666 and 1667 the English unsuccessfully attacked. The Treaty of Breda (1667) ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War and hence the hostilities.

In 1672, Louis XIV ordered the construction of a citadel, Fort Saint Louis, at Fort Royal Bay to defend Martinique. The next year, the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales decided to establish a town at Fort Royal, even though the location was a malarial swamp. The Compagnie des Indes Occidentales failed in 1674, and the colony reverted to the direct administration of the French crown. Martinique's administration was in the hands of council. The King appointed two members: the Lieutenant-general and the administrator. They chose the other council members (the governor, the Attorney General and the ordinary judge). This organization lasted until 1685.

During the Third Anglo-Dutch War, de Ruyter returned to Martinique in 1674, this time with the intent to capture Fort Royal. Calm winds and French booms prevented him from sailing his fleet of 30 warships, nine supply ships, and 15 transports into the harbor. The French repulsed his attempt to land his 3,400 troops, causing him to lose 143 men, at a cost of 15 French lives.

In 1675 the first Governor General of the West Indies, Jean-Charles de Baas-Castelmore, arrived in Martinique and served until 1677. His successor was Charles de La Roche-Courbon, comte de Blénac, who served for the first time from 1677 to 1683. He drew up a plan for the city of Fort Royal and improving the fortifications of Fort Saint Louis. de Blénac was responsible for the 10-year effort that resulted in the building of a 487-meter wall around the peninsula on which the Fort stood, the wall being four meters high and two meters thick, and cutting a ditch that separated from the town. de Blénac served as Governor General again from June 1684 to February 1691, and again from 24 Nov 1691 until his death in 1696.

The growth of the town resulted in the progressive clearing and draining of the mangrove swamp. By 1681, Fort-Royal was the administrative, military and political capital of Martinique. Still, Saint Pierre, with its better harbor, remained the commercial capital.

In 1685, in France King Louis XIV promulgated the "Code Noir" (literally, Black Code), a collection of law texts whose 60 articles would regulate slavery in the colonies, and which was partially inspired by Jean-Baptiste Colbert. The code forbade some cruel acts, but institutionalized others and slavery itself, relegating the status of slaves to that of chattel. It also ordered the expulsion of the Jews from all the French islands. These Jews then moved to the Dutch island of Curaçao, where they prospered.

In 1692, Charles de La Roche-Courbon, Count of Blénac, the Governor and Lieutenant General of the French colonies in America, named Fort Royal as the capital city of Martinique. In 1693 the English again unsuccessfully attacked Martinique.

1700–1788
In 1720, a French naval officer, Gabriel de Clieu, procured a coffee plant seedling from the Royal Botanical Gardens in Paris and transported it to Martinique. He transplanted it on the slopes of Mount Pelée and was able to harvest his first crop in 1726, or shortly thereafter. By 1736, the number of slaves in Martinique had risen to 60,000 people. In 1750, Saint Pierre had about 15,000 inhabitants, and Fort Royal only about 4,000.

During the Seven Years' War the British 76th Regiment of Foot under William Rufane captured Martinique in early 1762. Following Britain's victory in the war there was a strong possibility the island would be annexed by them. However, the sugar trade made the island so valuable to the royal French government that at the Treaty of Paris (1763), which ended the Seven Years' War, they declined to regain Canada in order to regain Martinique and the neighboring island of Guadeloupe. During the British occupation, Marie Josèph Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, the future Empress Joséphine was born to a noble family living on Les Trois-Îlets across the bay from Fort Royal. Also, 1762 saw a yellow fever epidemic and in 1763 the French established separate governments for Martinique and Guadeloupe.

August 2, 1766 saw the birth of Saint-Pierre de Louis Delgrès, a mixed-race free black who would serve in the French army and fight the British in 1794, before becoming the leader of the unsuccessful resistance in Guadeloupe against General Richepance, whom Napoleon had sent to restore slavery to that colony. On August 13 (in either 1766 or 1767) a hurricane – apparently accompanied by an earthquake – struck the island; 600–1600 were killed. Monsieur de la Pagerie, the father of the future Empress, was almost ruined. At the time, there were some 450 sugar mills in Martinique, and molasses was a major export. Four years later an earthquake shook the island. By 1774, when a decree ended indentured servitude for whites, there were some 18 to 19 million coffee trees on the island.

In 1779, the future Joséphine de Beauharnais, first Empress of the French, sailed for France to meet her husband for the first time. In the following year the Great Hurricane of 1780, one of the most damaging hurricanes in Western history, struck the island, killing 9000. Over 100 French and Dutch merchantmen were lost. In 1782, Admiral de Grasse sailed from Martinique to rendezvous with Spanish forces in order to attack Jamaica. The subsequent battle of the Saintes resulted in a massive defeat for the French at the hands of the Royal Navy.

French Revolution
The French Revolution (1789) also affected Trinidad when Martiniquan planters and their slaves emigrated there and started to grow sugar and cocoa. Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry, the deputy to the National Constituent Assembly for Martinique opposed representation for Free people of color.

On 4 April 1792, the French Legislative Assembly extended citizenship to all men of color. Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau was sent to Martinique to apply this law. The Constituent Assembly of Martinique agreed to promulgate this law. However they refused to allow Rochambeau to disembark with his troops. In 1793 there was a small, unsuccessful slave rebellion in Saint Pierre. The French executed six of the ringleaders. On 4 February 1793, Louis-Francois Dubuc signed an accord in Whitehall, London, putting Martinique under British jurisdiction until the French Monarchy could be re-established. In doing so he forestalled the spread of the French Revolution to Martinique preventing the Republican regime in France. Notably, the accord guaranteed all French colonists in Martinique the right to continue owning slaves.

In 1794 the French Convention issued a decree abolished slavery. However, before the decree could be transmitted to Martinique and implemented, the British invaded the island and occupied it. A British force under Admiral Sir John Jervis and Lieutenant General Sir Charles Grey captured Fort Royal and Fort Saint Louis on 22 March and Fort Bourbon two days later. At that point all French resistance ceased. On 30 March 1794, the British occupation reinstated the ancien regime, including the French Monarchy's Supreme Council and the seneschal's courts of Trinité, Le Marin, and St Pierre. French Royalists regained possession of their properties and positions, including their slaves, and emancipation was forbidden by the Royalist authorities, who also promulgated an ordinance banning all gatherings of blacks or meetings by slaves, and forbade Carnival.

Napoleonic Wars
Six years later, in 1800, Jean Kina, an ex-slave from Saint Domingue and aide-de-camp to a British officer, fled to Morne Lemaître and called on free blacks and slaves to join him in a rebellion in support of the rights of the free blacks against the Royalist government. When Kina's small force marched on Fort-Royal, British troops quickly responded and negotiated his surrender in return for amnesty. The British transported Kina to England, where they held him in Newgate Prison.

In 1802, the British returned the island to the French under the Treaty of Amiens. Napoléon Bonaparte reinstated slavery in the French colonies, though in Martinique it had never been abolished in practice, due to the British occupation. In 1796, he had married Martiniquan Joséphine de Beauharnais and in 1804 she became Empress of France.

During the Napoleonic Wars, in 1804 the British established a fort at Diamond Rock, outside Fort de France, and garrisoned it with some 120 sailors and five cannons. The Royal Navy commissioned the fort HMS Diamond Rock and from there were able for 17 months to harass vessels coming into the port. The French eventually sent a fleet of sixteen vessels that retook the island after a fierce bombardment.

The British again captured Martinique in 1809, and held it until 1814. In 1813, a hurricane killed 3,000 people in Martinique. During Napoleon's Hundred Days in 1815, he abolished the slave trade. At the same time the British briefly re-occupied Martinique. The British, who had abolished the slave trade in their empire in 1807, forced Napoleon's successor, Louis XVIII to retain the proscription, though it did not become truly effective until 1831.

1815–1899
A slave insurrection in 1822 resulted in two dead and seven injured. The government condemned 19 slaves to death, 10 to the galleys, six to whipping, and eight to helping with the executions.

Martinique has suffered from earthquakes as well as hurricanes. In 1839, an earthquake believed to have measured 6.5 on the Richter magnitude scale killed some 400 to 700 people, caused severe damage in Saint Pierre, and almost totally destroyed Fort Royal. Fort Royal was rebuilt in wood, reducing the risk from earthquakes, but increasing the risk from fire. That same year, there were 495 sugar producers in Martinique, who produced some 25,900 tons of "white gold".

In February 1848, François Auguste Perrinon became head of the Committee of Colonists of Martinique. He was a member of the Commission for the abolition of slavery, led by Victor Schœlcher. On April 27, Schœlcher obtained a decree abolishing slavery in the French Empire. Perrinon was appointed Commissioner General of Martinique, and charged with the task of abolishing slavery there. However, he and the decree did not arrive in Martinique until June 3, by which time Governor Claude Rostoland had already abolished slavery. The imprisonment of a slave at Le Prêcheur had led to a slave revolt on May 20; two days later Rostoland, under duress, had abolished slavery on the island to quell the revolt. That same year, following the establishment of the Second Republic, Fort Royal became Fort-de-France. In 1981, May 22 was declared a national holiday in celebration of emancipation.

In 1851 a law was passed authorizing the creation of two colonial banks with the authority to issue banknotes. This led to the founding of the Bank of Martinique in Saint Pierre, and the Bank of Guadeloupe. (These banks would merge in 1967 to form the present-day Banque des Antilles Française).

Indentured laborers from India started to arrive in Martinique in 1853. Plantation owners recruited the Indians to replace the slaves, who once free, had fled the plantations. This led to the creation of the small but continuing Indian community in Martinique. This immigration repeated on a smaller scale the importation of Indians to such British colonies as British Guiana and Trinidad and Tobago following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833. Towards the end of the century, 1000 Chinese also came as earlier they had come to Cuba.

The city government in 1857-58 cleared and filled the flood channel encircling Fort de France. The channel had become an open sewer and hence a health hazard. The filled-in channel, La Levee, marked the northern boundary of the city.

Martinique got its second enduring financial institution in 1863 when the Crédit Foncier Colonial opened its doors in Saint Pierre. Its objective was to make long-term loans for the construction or modernization of sugar factories. It replaced the Crédit Colonial, which had been established in 1860, but seems hardly to have gotten going.

In 1868 construction work on the Radoub Basin port facilities at Fort de France finally was completed. The improvements to the port would enable Fort de France better to compete in trade and commerce with Saint Pierre. In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, rising racial tensions led to the short-lived insurrection in southern Martinique and proclamation in Fort-de-France of a Martiniquan Republic. The insurrection started with an altercation between a local béké (white) and a black tradesman. A crowd lynched the béke and during the insurrection many sugar factories were torched. The authorities restored order by temporarily imprisoning some 500 rebels in Martinique's forts. Seventy-four were tried and found guilty, and the twelve principal leaders were shot to death. The authorities deported the rest to French Guiana or New Caledonia.

By this time sugar cane fields covered some 57% of Martinique's arable land. Unfortunately, falling prices for sugar forced many small sugar works to merge. Producers turned to rum production in an attempt to improve their fortunes.

When France established the Third Republic in 1871, the colonies, Martinique among them, gained representation in the National Assembly.

In 1887, after visiting Panama, Paul Gauguin spent some months with his friend Charles Laval, also a painter, in a cabin some two kilometers south of Saint Pierre. During this period Gauguin produced several paintings featuring Martinique. There is now a small Gauguin museum in Le Carbet that has reproductions of his Martinique paintings. That same year Harper's Weekly sent the author and translator Lafcadio Hearn to Martinique for a short visit; he ended up staying for some two years. After his return to the United States he would publish two books, one an account of his daily life in Martinique and the other the story of a slave.

By 1888, the population of Martinique had risen from about 163,000 people a decade earlier to 176,000. At the same time, natural disasters continued to plague the island. Much of Fort de France was devastated by a fire in 1890, and then the next year a hurricane killed some 400 people.

In the 1880s, the Paris architect Pierre-Henri Picq built the Schœlcher Library, an iron and glass structure that was exhibited in the Tuileries Gardens during the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. After the Exposition the building was shipped to Fort de France and reassembled there, the work being completed by 1893. Initially, the library contained the 10,000 books that Victor Schœlcher had donated to the island. Today it houses over 250,000 and stands as a tribute to the man who led the movement to abolish slavery in Martinique. In 1895, Picq also built the Saint-Louis Cathedral in Fort-de-France.

20th century
The abolition of slavery did not end racially charged labor strife. In 1900, a strike at a sugar factory owned by a Frenchman led to the police shooting dead 10 agricultural workers.

Mount Pelée eruption
On May 8, 1902, a blast from the volcano Mont Pelée destroyed the town of St. Pierre, killing almost all of its 29,000 inhabitants. The only survivors were a shoemaker and a prisoner who was saved by his position in a jail dungeon with only a single window. Because Saint Pierre was the commercial capital of the island, there were four banks in the city—the Banque de la Martinique, Banque Transatlantique, a branch of the Colonial Bank of London, and the Crédit Foncier Colonial. All were destroyed. The town had to be completely rebuilt and lost its status as the commercial capital, a title which shifted to Fort-de-France. Due to the eruption, refugees from Martinique arrived in boats to the southern villages of Dominica and some remained permanently on the island.

Return to normality
A hurricane in 1903 killed 31 people and damaged the sugar crop and a strong earthquake off Saint Lucia in 1906 caused further damage in Martinique, but mercifully no deaths. As construction began on the Panama Canal, more than 5,000 Martiniquans left to work on the project.

Resettlement of Saint Pierre began in 1908. Even so, two years later the City of Saint Pierre was removed from the map of France with jurisdiction over the ruins transferring to Le Carbet. Elsewhere, political opponents assassinated the mayor of Fort de France, Antoine Seger in 1908.

With war with Germany looming, in 1913 France enacted compulsory military service in the colony, and called on Martinique to send 1,100 men per year to France for training. When World War I finally came, 18,000 Martiniquans took part, of whom 1,306 died. During the war, the French government requisitioned Martinique's rum production for the use of the French Army. Production doubled as sugar mills converted to distilleries, helping the recovery of the local economy.

Between the World Wars
In 1923 Saint Pierre was reestablished as a municipality. Two years later, in Fort de France, the municipal council approved the Mayor's proposal to redevelop the slum district of Terres Sainvilles as a "workers city". The council would sell the new housing to the residents for 40 semi-annual interest-free payments.

With the collapse of the world market for sugar in 1921–22, cultivators sought a new crop. In 1928 they introduced bananas.

Mont Pelée became active in 1929, forcing the temporary evacuation of Saint Pierre. The Volcanological Observatory there did not get its first seismometer until some three years later. In 1931, the Martiniquan Aimé Césaire moved to Paris to attend the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, the École Normale Supérieure, and finally the Sorbonne. While in Paris, Césaire met Léopold Senghor, then a poet but later Senegal's first President. Césaire, Senghor, and Léon Damas, with whom Césaire had gone to school in Martinique at the Lycée Schœlcher, together formulated the concept of négritude, defined as an affirmation of pride in being black, and promoted it as a movement.

In 1933, André Aliker, the editor of Justice, the Communist newspaper, documented that a M. Aubéry, the wealthy, white owner of the Lareinty Company, had bribed the judges of the Court of Appeal to dismiss charges of tax fraud against him. That same year, Félix Eboué became the Acting Governor of the island, and an American, Frank Perret, established Le Musée Volcanologique at Saint Pierre.

In 1934, persons unknown kidnapped and murdered André Aliker; his body washed up on the beach with his arms tied behind him. Aimé Césaire, Senghor, Damas, and others, founded L'Etudiant, a Black student review.

In 1939, the French cruiser Jeanne d'Arc arrived late in the year with Admiral Georges Robert, High Commissioner of the Republic to the Antilles and Guiana. Aimé Césaire returned to Martinique. He became a teacher at the Lycée Schœlcher in Fort de France, where his students included Frantz Fanon and Édouard Glissant.

World War II
Until mid-1943, Martinique was officially pro-Vichy, with the US and Great Britain seeking to limit any effect of that stance on the war. The US did prepare plans for an invasion by an expeditionary force to capture the island, and at various times the US and Britain established blockades. For instance, from July to November 1940, the British cruisers HMS Fiji (46) and HMS Dunedin (D93) maintained a watch to ensure that the French aircraft carrier Béarn and the other French naval vessels in Martinique did not slip away to Europe.

In June 1940, the French cruiser Émile Bertin arrived in Martinique with 286 tons of gold from the Bank of France. The original intent was that Bank's gold reserve go to Canada for safekeeping, and a first shipment did go there. When France signed an armistice with Germany, plans changed and the second shipment was rerouted to Martinique. When it arrived in Martinique, Admiral Robert arranged for the storage of the gold in Fort Desaix. The island was blockaded by the Royal Navy and the British used the gold as collateral for Lend-Lease facilities from the US, on the basis it could be "acquired" at any time if needed.

In late 1941, Admiral Robert agreed to keep the French naval vessels, including the Émile Bertin immobilized, in return for the Allies not bombarding and invading the French Antilles. In mid-1943, Admiral Robert returned to France via Puerto Rico and Lisbon, and Free French sympathizers took control of the gold at Fort Desaix and the French fleet.

In 1944, the American film director Howard Hawks directed Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Hoagy Carmichael and Walter Brennan in the film To Have and Have Not. Hawks more-or-less based the film on a novel that Ernest Hemingway had written in 1937. The essence of the plot is the conversion from neutrality to the Free French side of an American fishing boat captain operating out of Vichy-controlled Fort de France in 1940.

In 1945, Aimé Césaire succeeded in getting elected Mayor of Fort de France and Deputy from Martinique to the French National Assembly as a member of the Communist Party. Césaire remained mayor for 56 years. However, the Communist suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 disillusioned him, causing him to quit the Communist Party. As a member of the Assembly, he was one of the principal drafters of the 1946 law on departmentalizing former colonies, a role for which politicians favoring independence have often criticized him.

In 1947 the High Court of Justice in Versailles tried Admiral Robert for collaboration. He received a sentence of 10 years at hard labor and national degradation for life. The Court released him from the hard labor after six months, and he received a pardon in 1957.

Departmental era
In 1946, the French National Assembly voted unanimously to transform Martinique from a colony of France into a department, known in French as a Département d'outre-mer or DOM. Along with its fellow DOMs of Guadeloupe, Réunion, and French Guiana, Martinique was intended to be legally identical to any department in the metropole. However, in reality, several key differences remained, particularly within social security payments and unemployment benefits.

Some think that French funding to the DOM has somewhat made up for the social and economic devastation of the slave trade and sugar crop monoculture. With French funding to Martinique, the island had one of the highest standards of living in the Caribbean. However, it remained, somewhat constrained, dependent upon French aid, as when measured by what Martinique actually produced, it was one of the poorer islands. Martinique being one of the poorer islands is due to everything costing on average 12.3% more than in France while salaries being on average lower. Many inequalities and political issues are also at cause.

Sources and references

title: History of Martinique


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Earth First!

Earth First! is a radical environmental advocacy group that originated in the Southwestern United States. It was founded in 1980 by Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, and Ron Kezar. Today there are Earth First groups around the world including ones in Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, New Zealand, the Philippines, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Inspired by several environmental writings, including Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Aldo Leopold's land ethic, and Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang, a small group of environmental activists composed of Dave Foreman, ex-Yippie Mike Roselle, Wyoming Wilderness Society representatives Bart Koehler and Howie Wolke, and Bureau of Land Management employee Ron Kezar, united to form Earth First. While traveling in Foreman's VW bus from the El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve in northern Mexico to Albuquerque, New Mexico, the group pledged, "No compromise in defense of Mother Earth!".

The co-founders of the group were called to action during the second "Roadless Area Review and Evaluation" (RARE II) by the U.S. Forest Service, which they considered a sell-out by mainstream environmental advocates. The activists envisioned a revolutionary movement, with the goal to set aside multi-million-acre ecological preserves all across the United States. Their ideas drew upon the concepts of conservation biology, which had been developing for over twenty years by notable scientists like E. O. Wilson; however, mainstream environmental groups were slow to embrace the new science. These events and ideologies coalesced after a grueling hike, as the men were headed toward Albuquerque. After "Foreman called out 'Earth First!', Roselle drew a clenched fist logo, passed it up to the front of the van, and there was Earth First!".

Early years, from 1980–1989
Earth First was founded on April 4, 1980, by Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, and Ron Kezar.

During the group's early years (1980–1986), Earth First mixed publicity stunts (such as rolling a plastic "crack" down Glen Canyon Dam) with far-reaching wilderness proposals that reportedly surpassed the actions that mainstream environmental groups were willing to take (relying on conservation biology research from a biocentric perspective). The group's proposals were published in a periodical, ''Earth First! The Radical Environmental Journal, informally known as the Earth First! Journal''. Edward Abbey often spoke at early gatherings, and his inspirational writings led him to be revered by the early movement. An annual gathering of the group was known as the Round River Rendezvous, with the name taken from an Ojibwa myth about a continuous river of life flowing into and out of itself and sustaining all relations. The rendezvous is a celebration with art and music, as well as an activist conference with workshops and recounts of past actions. Another project led by the organization at this time was the creation of ''Earth First! Foundation'', a tax-deductible fund which was established to provide financial support for research, advocacy and education by Earth First activists. The fund was later renamed the Fund for Wild Nature in 1991.

In the spring of 1985, a nationwide call to action against the logging company Willamette Industries, published in the ''Earth First! Journal'' brought Earth First members from around the United States to the Willamette National Forest of Western Oregon. After finding road blockades (carried out by Corvallis-based Cathedral Forest Action Group) were not an efficient form of protection against logging, Marylander Ron Huber and Washingtonian Mike Jakubal devised tree sitting as a more effective civil disobedience alternative.

On May 23, 1985, Mike Jakubal led the first Earth First tree sit. When U.S. Forest Service law enforcement official Steve Slagowski arrived, Mike Roselle, Ron Huber, and others were arrested for sitting at the base of the tree in support. The first "tree-sitting" lasted less than a day—Jakubal came down in the evening to look over the remains of the forest that had been cut down around him, and was arrested by a hidden Forest Service officer—but the tree-sitting concept was deemed sound by Earth First! members. Huber, Jakubal, and Roselle demonstrated the concept at the June 14 Washington EF Rendezvous; on June 23, a convoy of activists arrived at Willamette National Forest and set up tree platforms in "Squaw/Three timbersale", a location the group thought was threatened with imminent destruction. While at one point, up to a dozen trees were occupied, on July 10 a clash took down all the trees with platforms except for Ron Huber's after the other sitters had left for an overnight meeting elsewhere. Huber remained at his tree, dubbed Yggdrasil, until July 20 when two Linn County sheriff's deputies were lifted in a crane box and wrestled him from the tree.

Direct action
After 1987, Earth First became primarily associated with direct action to prevent logging, building of dams, and other forms of development which may cause destruction of wildlife habitats or the despoliation of wild places. The change in direction attracted many new members to Earth First, some of whom came from a leftist or anarchist political background or were involved in the counterculture. Dave Foreman has suggested that this led to the introduction of activities such as a "puke-in" at a shopping mall, a flag burning, the heckling of Edward Abbey at the 1987 Earth First rendezvous, and back-and-forth debates in the ''Earth First! Journal'' on topics such as anarchism, with which Foreman and other Earth First members did not wish to be associated. Most of the group's older members, including Dave Foreman, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, Christopher Manes, George Wuerthner, and ''Earth First! Journal'' editor John Davis, became increasingly uncomfortable with this new direction. This tension reportedly led several of the founders to sever their ties to Earth First in 1990. Many of them went on to launch the magazine, Wild Earth, as well as the environmental group, the Wildlands Project. On the other hand, Roselle, along with activists such as Judi Bari, welcomed the new direct-action tactics and leftist direction of Earth First.

Starting in the mid-1980s, Earth First increasingly promoted and identified with "deep ecology", a philosophy put forth by Arne Næss, Bill Devall, and George Sessions, which holds that all forms of life on Earth have equal value in and of themselves, without regard for their utility to human beings.

From 1990–present
Since 1990, action within the Earth First movement has become increasingly influenced by anarchist political philosophy. This change brought a rotation of the primary media organ in differing regions,, an aversion to organized leadership or administrative structure, and a new trend of identifying Earth First as a mainstream movement rather than an organization. In 1992, Earth First's push toward the mainstream movement led to the creation of an offshoot group called Earth Liberation Front. The Earth Liberation Front was formally introduced during the 1992 "Earth First! Round River Rendezvous", where young activists debated the effectiveness of civil disobedience activism tactics in light of the ever-increasing destruction of the planet by human activity. Elders of the Earth First movement gave their blessing to this newly formed strike team known as ELF. ELF became the extremists of the environmental movement, just as the Earth First movement itself had been when it was created a decade earlier.

Earth First protests commonly involved occupations of forested timber sale areas and other threatened natural areas. In these protests, dozens of people physically locked their bodies to trees, bulldozers, and desks using specially created lock boxes (metal tubes reinforced with rebar) through which protesters threaded their arms, or using bicycle U-locks in order to lock their necks to other objects.

HeadWaters
The HeadWaters campaign in Northern California aimed to protect the last old-growth redwood forests, Headwaters Grove (now known as Headwaters Forest Reserve) 3,000 acres of forest from logging by the Pacific Lumber Company. Charles Hurwitz and his company Maxxam, Inc. purchased Pacific Lumber Company in 1985, and planned to liquidate its assets including these old-growth forests.

In May 1987, sawmill worker George Alexander lost several teeth and fractured his jaw when the saw he was operating struck an 11-inch spike and fragmented, sending shrapnel into his face. This incident, which occurred at the Cloverdale Louisiana-Pacific mill in northern California, is alleged to have been caused by tree-spiking by Earth First! members, but no conclusive evidence has been found to prove this.

In 1997, as part of the ongoing HeadWaters Redwoods protests, activists locked themselves to a redwood stump which was carried into California Congressman Frank Riggs' office in Eureka. HeadWaters was an ongoing protest lasting over a decade, and ending in 2009.

The 1990s lawsuit, Headwaters Forest Defense vs. Humboldt County, charged that police officers were using excessive force, including chemical weapons.

The first acknowledged death of an Earth First activist occurred on September 18, 1998, in Northern California's Redwood forests. Earth First activist David Nathan "Gypsy" Chain attempted to protect the forest by trespassing inside an active logging site. During the logging operations, a large redwood was cut down by a Pacific Lumber logger and fell upon Chain, who died instantly.

Cove-Mallard Timber
Between 1992 and 1998 took place the largest timber sale in United States Forest Service history, the Cove-Mallard timber sale of 6,000 acres in Idaho near the Nez Perce National Forest. The group of EarthFirst activists focused on this area were called the "Cove-Mallard Coalition".

With the aid of a nearby landowner, a former land developer turned activist, Earth First occupied the forest. As a result, Earth First succeeded in saving most of the threatened wilderness area. Over 350 people from 12 countries were arrested and the project was reduced from its initial plan of 200 clear-cuts and the construction of seven new roads, to 37 clear-cuts and two new roads. In June 1993, Earth First halted the construction of the Noble Road by erecting elaborate multi-layered barricades, which included U.S. Forest Service vehicles. These barricades were constructed in one night, during which activists traveled 17 miles through the mountains dodging law enforcement patrols who had been informed of the planned demonstration. The first tripod lockdowns occurred at this incident, which involved three 30 foot logs, tied together and placed upright, with an activist tied to a platform between them 20 feet in the air. The tripod was placed over trenches in which four activists were buried in quick-drying cement. Two additional activists used U-locks to lock their necks to the front axles of responding vehicles. U.S. Forest Service shot at activists and raided the land with a SWAT team armed with M-16s. 27 activists were arrested.

William "Avalon" Rodgers, a member of the Earth Liberation Front, who alongside the rest of his ELF group was also arrested and were serving life sentences in federal prison for crimes that involved property damage. Rodgers was a long term Earth First activist, and one of the occupation activists of Free Cascadia/Warner Creek Oregon and the Cove/Mallard Idaho protests for years and one of four who constantly camped out in snow-caves monitoring the only logging of Noble Road in the winter of January to March 1995 in 12-foot deep snow and sub-zero temps.

Free Cascadia
During Free Cascadia, a mass occupation organized by Earth First at the Warner Creek timber sale in Oregon, 50-plus activists continuously occupied the burnt forested mountains of Oregon for a year in 1994-1995. They endured bad weather and law enforcement raids. Their barricades which were dug in reinforced trenches, forts with watchtowers, and tree-sits enabled a constant occupation of the land while lawsuits and political actions locally and in Washington D.C., ultimately saved the land. Warner Creek is often seen an example of how the Earth First movement was successful, though most Earth First occupations of timber sales, failed.

In the summer of 1995, environmental activists attempted to occupy the old-growth timber sale area of Sugarloaf Mountain in Southern Oregon. The Sugarloaf Mountain had been in legal battles for over a decade when the "Rider from Hell" was added in committee to the congressional Crime Bill of 1994, which mandated the logging of thousands of acres of old-growth forest. The United States Forest Service declared an exclusionary zone of 30 square miles in southern Oregon and arrested anyone in the area, including a local woman walking her dog. Over 100 federal agents, supported by helicopters and the elite US Army Ranger-trained law enforcement squad known as "Camo-Feddies," arrested hundreds of activists. The environmental activists engaged at all levels of protest with numerous public and illegal demonstrations by Earth First, protests at government offices locally and in Washington D.C., tree-sits in active logging zones, and even an attempted helicopter pad lock-down to immobilize logging helicopters. One tree from Sugarloaf timber sale, which was a four day long tree-sit by a local father and son Earth First team, required 9 log trucks to carry it out in sections. This tree was estimated to be over 400 years old and took twenty-seven minutes to cut down using a 7-foot chainsaw.

Earth First responded by immediately occupying the nearby timber sale known as China Left in early October 1995 to defend the old-growth forest and the last wild salmon spawning grounds in Oregon. EF activists used dragon lock-boxes on both ends of the valley's only road to protect the area. A female Earth First activist known as "Ocean" held the road for a day as police attempted to remove this human-and-cement blockade, allowing Earth First to dig in farther down the valley. This was the start of two-year-long occupation protest, during which a pickup truck was turned into a lock box to block the only bridge to the valley.

Judi Bari car bombing
In 1990, a bomb exploded in the car of Earth First activist Judi Bari, injuring Bari and fellow activist Darryl Cherney. Bari and Cherney were arrested due to suspicions by the police and Federal Bureau of Investigation that they had been transporting a bomb that had accidentally exploded. Bari contended that extremists opposed to her pro-environmental actions had placed the bomb in her car in order to kill her. The case against them was eventually dropped due to lack of evidence.

Bari died of cancer in 1997, but her federal lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland, California police resulted in a 2002 jury verdict awarding her estate and Darryl Cherney a total of $4.4 million.

A documentary movie about the court case, entitled The Forest for the Trees, was released in 2006. It was directed by Bernadine Mellis, whose father is one of the lawyers featured in the documentary. The documentary Who Bombed Judi Bari?, directed by Mary Liz Thomson, was released in 2012. The filmmakers are offering a $50,000 reward for information leading the arrest of the bomber.

On March 21, 2011, a U.S. federal judge in California ordered the FBI to preserve evidence related to the car bombing. The FBI was planning to destroy all evidence in the case. The bombing remains unsolved.

Protest and ecodefense
Most activists of Earth First have previously participated in more moderate forms of environmental and political activism, including protest marches and writing letters to politicians. 'Fawn", an Earth Firster in the United States, grew up as a Republican, in a middle-class family. Most members of Earth First identify as decentralized, locally informed activists whose ideas stem from communitarian ethics. One of the early critics of Earth First's change in tactics later accused the FBI of deliberately introducing the concept of Non-Violence to the group.

In various parts of the United States, individual citizens and small groups form the base for grassroots political actions. These may take the form of legal actions, including protests, timber sale appeals, and educational campaigns or civil disobedience, including tree sitting, road blockades, and sabotage (also called "ecotage" by some Earth First members, who claim it is a form of ecodefense). Often, disruptive direct action is used primarily as a stalling tactic in an attempt to prevent possible environmental destruction while Earth First lawsuits try to secure long-term victories. Reported tactics include road blockades, activists locking themselves to heavy equipment, tree-sitting, and sabotage of machinery.

Earth First was known for providing information in the ''Earth First! Journal'' on the practice of tree-spiking and monkeywrenching (or ecotage), although there is no evidence that Earth First was involved in related activity. In 1990, Judi Bari convinced Earth First in the Northern California and Southern Oregon region to renounce the practice of tree-spiking, calling them counterproductive to an effort to form a coalition with workers and small logging businesses to defeat large-scale corporate logging in Northern California.

Police used non-lethal weapons and tactics against Earth First protesters including pepper spray, pain compliance holds, police dogs, and the threat of guns in attempts to coerce the protesters to abandon their lock downs.

United Kingdom
The movement in the United Kingdom started in 1990, when a group in Hastings, Sussex organised an action at Dungeness nuclear power station in Kent. It grew rapidly, and many groups formed, with or without the EF name, over the next years.

The first major Earth First action happened in December 1991 at Port of Tilbury and focused around the importation of tropical hardwood. The second major action, the Merseyside Dock Action, attracted between 200–600 people who occupied Liverpool docks for two days. This action coincided with the Earth First roadshow, in which a group of UK & US Earth Firsters toured the country. Other early campaigns also focused on timber-yards, most notably the Timbmet yard in Oxford.

There are now various regional Earth First groups, the "EF! Action Update" has been joined by the "EF! Action Reports website" and a yearly Earth First national gathering. At the first gathering in Sussex the debate focused on the use of criminal damage as a protest technique. Earth First decided to neither 'condemn nor condone' criminal damage, instead it focused more on non-violent direct action techniques. Some people at the gathering coined the term Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which became a separate movement which spread back to the US. Actions involving criminal damage did happen often under cover of night and were typically done under an ELF banner and attributed to elves and pixies, or the Earth Liberation Faeries, giving a distinctly British feel to the movement.

Major growth in the direct action movement started with a concurrent focus on roads, and a protest camp at Twyford Down was started, against the M3 in Hampshire. Whilst Earth First groups still played an essential part, other groups such as the Dongas tribe soon formed. Alongside SchNEWS, such publications as the "Earth First! Action Update", and Do or Die were means of communication between the groups. The movement grew to other road protest camps including the Newbury bypass, the A30 and the M11 link road protest in London, where whole streets were squatted in order to slow down the construction work. Later the focus widened to other campaigns including Reclaim the Streets, anti-genetics campaigns, and Rising Tide. More recently, there have been groups such as Peat Alert! and Plane Stupid.

The UK Earth First groups differed considerably from the U.S. groups as reported in a ten-year retrospective of the Earth First by two of the founders Jake Bowers and Jason Torrance:

"We knew EF US's original hardline 'rednecks for wilderness' attitude wouldn't appeal here, so we set out to build a group that combined radical action and social justice to protect Britain's few remaining natural places."

Seeing ecological and social justice as one and the same, in addition to organizing along anarchist lines and bringing in other radical and militant struggles, mixed with audacious actions and real radicalism spread the EF ideal to other countries and helped morph the US movement.

Fairfield Snowbowl Ski Resort
Earth First member Mark Davis was sentenced in Federal court to six years in prison for malicious destruction of property at the Fairfield Snowbowl Ski Resort near Flagstaff, Arizona, in concert with David Foreman, Ilse Asplund, Margaret Millett, and Mark Baker. Davis had been charged with "using a torch to cut around the base of the top pylon of the main chair lift at Snowbowl on October 25, 1988."

The resort attack, sabotage at Energy Fuels' Canyon uranium mine (6 miles southeast of Tusayan, Arizona), and attempting to cut down power-line towers leading to the Central Arizona Project aqueduct, were characterized as dress rehearsals for attacks on nuclear plants.

Telluride Ski Resort
On August 10, 1991, vandals identifying themselves as members of Earth First forced the closing of the Telluride Ski Resort in Mountain Village, Colorado using a chemical to write messages on 11 greens, such as "Earth First!", "Hayduke lives" and "Ron you pig". In relation to the incident, the Telluride Times Journal received a letter signed "Earth First" stating that the ski lift had been sabotaged with a welding gas applied to the lift cable that weakens the metal.

Aspen Pipeline Sabotage
A gas pipeline in Aspen Colorado was sabotaged turning off heat to 3,500 people on December 29, 2020. The perpetrators wrote "Earth First!" on the pipeline.

Books about the early years

 * Davis, John, ed. The Earth First! Reader: Ten Years of Radical Environmentalism (1991) (ISBN 978-0-87905-387-1)
 * Foreman, David. Confessions of an Eco-Warrior (1991) (ISBN 978-0-517-88058-6)
 * Foreman, David. Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching (1985) (ISBN 978-0-9637751-0-8)
 * Manes, Christopher. Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization (1990) (ISBN 978-0-316-54532-7)
 * Scarce, Rik. Eco-Warriors: Understanding the Radical Environmental Movement (2006) (ISBN 978-1-59874-028-8)
 * Wall, Derek. Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement: Radical Environmentalism and Comparative Social Movements  (1999) (ISBN 978-0415190640)
 * Zakin, Susan. Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement (1993) (ISBN 978-0-8165-2185-2)
 * Lee, Martha. Earth First!: Environmental Apocalypse (1995) (ISBN 978-0-8156-0365-8)

Books about Earth First, post–1990

 * Bari, Judi. Timber Wars (1994) (ISBN 978-1-56751-026-3)
 * EF! Publications. Do or Die - Voices from the Ecological Resistance (ISBN 0-9545662-0-3) (ISSN 1462-5989)
 * King, Elli (Editor) LISTEN: The Story of the People at Taku Wakan Tipi and the Reroute of Highway 55 or The Minnehaha Free State(2006)
 * Scarce, Rik. Eco-Warriors: Understanding the Radical Environmental Movement (2006) (ISBN 978-1-59874-028-8)
 * Wall, Derek Earth First and the Anti-Roads Movement (1999) (ISBN 978-0-415-19064-0)
 * Woodhouse, Keith Makoto. The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism (2018)

Books critical of Earth First

 * Arnold, Ron. Ecoterror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature (1997) (ISBN 978-0-939571-18-5)
 * Bradford, George. How Deep is Deep Ecology? (1989) (ISBN 978-0-87810-035-4)
 * Clausen, Barry. Walking on the Edge: How I Infiltrated Earth First! (1994) (ISBN 978-0-936783-12-3)
 * Coleman, Kate. The Secret Wars of Judi Bari (2005) (ISBN 978-1-893554-74-0)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Earth First!


text:
Francis Schaeffer

Francis August Schaeffer (January 30, 1912 – May 15, 1984) was an American evangelical theologian, philosopher, and Presbyterian pastor. He co-founded the L'Abri community in Switzerland with his wife Edith Schaeffer, Seville, a prolific author in her own right. Opposed to theological modernism (which prefers, e.g., rational thought and religious experience over doctrinal pronouncements by leaders or following religious traditions), Schaeffer promoted what he claimed was a more historic Protestant faith and a presuppositional approach to Christian apologetics, which he believed would answer the questions of the age.

Biography
Schaeffer was born on January 30, 1912, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to Franz A. Schaeffer III and Bessie Williamson. He was of German and English ancestry.

In 1935, Schaeffer graduated magna cum laude from Hampden–Sydney College. The same year he married Edith Seville, the daughter of missionary parents who had been with the China Inland Mission founded by Hudson Taylor. Schaeffer then enrolled at Westminster Theological Seminary in the fall and studied under Cornelius Van Til (presuppositional apologetics) and J. Gresham Machen (doctrine of inerrancy).

In 1937, Schaeffer transferred to Faith Theological Seminary, graduating in 1938. This seminary was newly formed as a result of a split between the Presbyterian Church of America (now the Orthodox Presbyterian Church) and the Bible Presbyterian Church, a Presbyterian denomination more identified with Fundamentalist Christianity and premillennialism. Schaeffer was the first student to graduate and the first to be ordained in the Bible Presbyterian Church. He served pastorates in Pennsylvania (Grove City and Chester) and St. Louis, Missouri. Schaeffer eventually sided with the Bible Presbyterian Church Columbus Synod following the BPC Collingswood and BPC Columbus split in 1956. BPC Columbus reorganized as the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in 1961, and Schaeffer followed the EPC into the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod when the Bible Presbyterian Church's Columbus Synod merged with the Reformed Presbyterian Church, General Synod in 1965, a denomination which would merge with the Presbyterian Church in America, in 1982.

In 1948, the Schaeffer family moved to Switzerland and in 1955 established the community called L'Abri (French for "the shelter"). Serving as both a philosophy seminar and a spiritual community, L'Abri attracted thousands of young people, and was later expanded into Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Schaeffer received numerous honorary degrees. In 1954, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Highland College in Long Beach, California. In 1971, he received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. In 1982, John Warwick Montgomery nominated Schaeffer for an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, which was conferred in 1983 by the Simon Greenleaf School of Law, Anaheim, California in recognition of his apologetic writings and ministry.

Schaeffer died of lymphoma on May 15, 1984, in Rochester, Minnesota. He opened a L'Abri branch there before his death. Schaeffer Academy, a private K-12 school in Rochester, is named after him.

Family relationships
In Crazy for God, Schaeffer's son Frank presents a portrait of his father that is far more nuanced and multi-dimensional than was suggested by his public persona. He states, for example, that Schaeffer's primary passions in life were not the Bible and theology but rather art and culture. "And what moved him was not theology but beauty". Schaeffer's son claims he had frequent bouts with depression and a verbally and physically abusive relationship with his wife, Edith. Those in the inner circle at L'Abri challenge Frank's account. Os Guinness, who lived with the Schaeffers and was a close friend of both the younger and elder Schaeffer, described Crazy for God as a "scurrilous caricature" and said, "[N]o one should take Frank's allegations at face value."

Frank Schaeffer initially supported his father's ideas and political program, but has since distanced himself from many of those views, first converting to the Eastern Orthodox Church and later becoming a liberal and a self described "atheist who believes in God."

Apologetics
Schaeffer's approach to Christian apologetics was primarily influenced by Herman Dooyeweerd, Edward John Carnell, and Cornelius Van Til, but he was not known to be a strict presuppositionalist in the Van Tillian tradition. His approach to culture was heavily influenced by his friendship with Hans Rookmaaker. In a 1948 article in The Bible Today, Schaeffer explained his own apologetics and how he walked a middle path between evidentialism and presuppositionalism, noting that "If the unsaved man was consistent he would be an atheist in religion, an irrationalist in philosophy (including a complete uncertainty concerning 'natural laws'), and completely a-moral in the widest sense." J. Budziszewski summarizes the article about this middle path approach by writing:

"Presuppositionalists, he held, are right to assert that the ultimate premises of Christian and anti–Christian systems of thought are utterly at odds in relation to their origin. On the other hand, evidentialists are right to assert that between Christian and anti–Christian systems of thought there is always a point of contact in the shape of reality itself. The reason for this point of contact, he argued, is that nonbelievers cannot bring themselves to be completely consistent with their own presuppositions, and this inconsistency is a result of what many call common grace and is in fact the reality of God having made, and spoken into, a defined and unavoidable creation. 'Thus, illogically', he wrote, 'men have in their accepted worldviews various amounts of that which is ours. But, illogical though it may be, it is there and we can appeal to it.'"

Schaeffer came to use this middle path as the basis for his method of evangelism which he called "Taking the roof off". An example of Taking the roof off in written form can be found in Schaeffer's work entitled Death in the City. Nancy Pearcey also describes two books by Schaeffer, Escape From Reason and The God Who Is There in this way:

"In these books, Schaeffer explains the history of the two-story division of knowledge, often referred to as the fact/value split. He also describes his apologetics method, which combined elements of both evidentialism and presuppositionalism."

Influence of Rushdoony
In the 1960s Schaeffer read the works of Reconstructionist theologian Rousas John Rushdoony with appreciation, and according to Barry Hankins, "it is quite likely that Schaeffer's belief that the United States was founded on a Christian base came in part from Rushdoony." Schaeffer later lost this fervor because Rushdoony was a postmillennialist (holding the doctrine that the kingdom of God will be built on earth before the second coming of Jesus) while Schaeffer was a premillennialist (holding that the kingdom of God will only be ushered in with the second coming). Further Schaeffer thought that Rushdoony's system would require a merger of church and state, which he opposed. He held that the principles, not the actual details, of Old Testament civil law were applicable under the New Covenant of Jesus. He wrote "The moral law [of the Old Testament], of course, is constant, but the civil law only was operative for the Old Testament theocracy. I do not think there is any indication of a theocracy in the New Testament until Christ returns as king."

Legacy
The Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation in Gryon, Switzerland is led by one of his daughters and sons-in-law as a small-scale alternative to the original L'Abri Fellowship International, which is still operating in nearby Huemoz-sur-Ollon and other places in the world. Covenant Theological Seminary has established the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute directed by a former English L'Abri member, Jerram Barrs. The purpose of the school is to train Christians to demonstrate compassionately and defend reasonably what they see as the claims of Christ on all of life.

According to Michael Hamilton of Christianity Today, "Perhaps no intellectual save C. S. Lewis affected the thinking of evangelicals more profoundly [than Francis Schaeffer]; perhaps no leader of the period save Billy Graham left a deeper stamp on the movement as a whole."

Institute of Church Leadership
In 1978, Schaeffer asked a group of Reformed Episcopal Clergy to research his thoughts and current trends, forming a church guild called "The Society of Reformed Philosophical Thinkers". This was merged in 1988 with "Into Thy Word Ministries", which was then transformed into "The Francis A. Schaeffer Institute of Church Leadership Development" in 1998. Its purpose is to strategize how to reach and train pastors and church leaders to focus on Christ centered principles. Its aim is to point the church back to "true-Truth" and "true spirituality". The foundation develops comprehensive curriculum for pastors, church planters and church leaders.

Political activism
Francis Schaeffer is credited with helping spark a return to political activism among Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists in the late 1970s and early 1980s, especially in relation to the issue of abortion. In his memoir Crazy for God, Schaeffer's son Frank takes credit for pressing his father to take on the abortion issue, which Schaeffer initially considered "too political". Schaeffer called for a challenge to what he saw as the increasing influence of secular humanism. Schaeffer's views were expressed in two works, his book entitled A Christian Manifesto, as well as the book and film series, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?.

A Christian Manifesto
Schaeffer's book A Christian Manifesto was published in 1981 and later delivered as a sermon in 1982. It was intended as a Christian answer to The Communist Manifesto of 1848 and the Humanist Manifesto documents of 1933 and 1973. Schaeffer's diagnosis is that the decline of Western Civilization is due to society having become increasingly pluralistic, resulting in a shift "away from a world view that was at least vaguely Christian in people's memory… toward something completely different." Schaeffer argues that there is a philosophical struggle between the people of God and the secular humanists. In the sermon version of the book, Schaeffer defines secular humanism as the worldview where "man is the measure of all things". He claims that critics of the Christian right miss the mark by confusing the "humanist religion" with humanitarianism, the humanities, or love of humans. He describes the conflict with secular humanism as a battle in which "these two religions, Christianity and humanism, stand over against each other as totalities." He writes that the decline of commitment to objective truth that he perceives in the various institutions of society is "not because of a conspiracy, but because the church has forsaken its duty to be the salt of the culture."

"A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state and hidden his Jewish neighbors from the German SS Troops. The government had abrogated its authority, and it had no right to make any demands."

He then suggests that similar tactics be used to stop abortion. But Schaeffer argues he is not talking about a theocracy:

"State officials must know that we are serious about stopping abortion… First, we must make definite that we are in no way talking about any kind of theocracy. Let me say that with great emphasis. Witherspoon, Jefferson, the American Founders had no idea of a theocracy. That is made plain by the First Amendment, and we must continually emphasize the fact that we are not talking about some kind, or any kind, of a theocracy."

Christian Reconstructionists Gary North and David Chilton were highly critical of A Christian Manifesto and Schaeffer.

Their critical comments were prompted, they wrote, by the popularity of Schaeffer's book. They suggested that Schaeffer supports pluralism because he sees the First Amendment as freedom of religion for all; and they themselves reject pluralism. Pointing out negative statements Schaeffer made about theocracy, North and Chilton then explain why they promote it. They extend their criticism of Schaeffer:

"The fact remains that Dr. Schaeffer's manifesto offers no prescriptions for a Christian society. We mention that merely in the interests of clarity, for we are not sure that anybody has noticed it up to now. The same comment applies to all of Dr. Schaeffer's writings: he does not spell out the Christian alternative."

Influence on Christian conservatives
Christian conservative leaders such as Tim LaHaye have credited Schaeffer for influencing their theological arguments urging political participation by evangelicals.

Beginning in the 1990s, critics began exploring the intellectual and ideological connection between Schaeffer's political activism and writings of the early 1980s to contemporary religious-political trends in the Christian Right, sometimes grouped under the name Dominionism, with mixed conclusions.

Sara Diamond and Frederick Clarkson have written articles tracing the activism of numerous key figures in the Christian Right to the influence of Francis Schaeffer. According to Diamond: "The idea of taking dominion over secular society gained widespread currency with the 1981 publication of...Schaeffer's book A Christian Manifesto. The book sold 290,000 copies in its first year, and it remains one of the movement's most frequently cited texts." Diamond summarizes the book and its importance to the Christian Right:

 * In A Christian Manifesto, Schaeffer's argument is simple. The United States began as a nation rooted in Biblical principles. But as society became more pluralistic, with each new wave of immigrants, proponents of a new philosophy of secular humanism gradually came to dominate debate on policy issues. Since humanists place human progress, not God, at the center of their considerations, they pushed American culture in all manner of ungodly directions, the most visible results of which included legalized abortion and the secularization of the public schools. At the end of -- A Christian Manifesto, Schaeffer calls for Christians to use civil disobedience to restore Biblical morality, which explains Schaeffer's popularity with groups like Operation Rescue. Randall Terry has credited Schaeffer as a major influence in his life.

Frederick Clarkson explains that this had practical applications:

 * "Francis Schaeffer is widely credited with providing the impetus for Protestant evangelical political action against abortion. For example, Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, says: "You have to read Schaeffer's Christian Manifesto if you want to understand Operation Rescue." Schaeffer, a longtime leader in Rev. Carl McIntire's splinter denomination, the Bible Presbyterian Church, was a reader of Reconstructionist literature but has been reluctant to acknowledge its influence. Indeed, Schaeffer and his followers specifically rejected the modern application of Old Testament law."

Analyses of Schaeffer as the major intellectual influence on Dominionism can be found in the works of authors such as Diamond and Chip Berlet. Other authors argue against a close connection with dominionism, for example Irving Hexham of the University of Calgary, who maintains that Schaeffer's political position has been misconstrued as advocating the Dominionist views of R. J. Rushdoony, who is a Christian Reconstructionist. Hexham indicates that Schaeffer's essential philosophy was derived from Herman Dooyeweerd, not Rushdoony, and that Hans Rookmaaker introduced Schaeffer to his writings. Dooyeweerd was a Dutch legal scholar and philosopher, following in the footsteps of Neo-Calvinist Abraham Kuyper.

Congresswoman and 2012 United States presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has cited Schaeffer's documentary series How Should We Then Live? as having a "profound influence" on her life and that of her husband Marcus.

Writings

Francis A. Schaeffer wrote twenty-two books, which covering a range of issues. They can be roughly split into five sections, as in the edition of his Complete Works (ISBN 0-89107-347-7):

 * A Christian View of Philosophy and Culture: The first three books in this block are known as Schaeffer's "trilogy", laying down the apologetical, philosophical, epistemological, and theological foundation for all his work.
 * The God Who Is There: Deals with the existence and relevance of God, and how modern man came to first distance himself from, and ultimately disbelieve, God as revealed by the Bible.
 * Escape from Reason: How the rejection of the biblical God causes man to lose contact with reality and reason.
 * He Is There and He Is Not Silent: How God speaks to man through the Bible on the three philosophically fundamental areas of metaphysics, morals, and epistemology.
 * Back to Freedom and Dignity: An answer to B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, arguing that freedom and dignity of man are God-given and therefore can't be left aside without dire consequences.
 * A Christian View of the Bible as Truth
 * Genesis in Space and Time: Argues that the historical (as opposed to literalist or figurative) view of Genesis as historically true is fundamental to the Christian faith.
 * No Final Conflict
 * Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History
 * Basic Bible Studies: Biblical studies on the fundamentals of the faith.
 * Art and the Bible
 * A Christian View of Spirituality
 * No Little People: Argues that Christians should never despair of having a significant life of realizations, small as they seem to be.
 * True Spirituality: The spiritual foundation for Schaeffer's work, as a complement to the theological and philosophical approach of most other books. Useful for gaining a balanced view of the whole of Schaeffer's life and ministry.
 * The New Super-Spirituality: Claims the intellectual decadence of students and the counter-culture from the late sixties to the early seventies can be traced back to the conformism of their fathers, only with fewer moral absolutes, and predicts the contamination of the church. Offers an analysis of Postmodernism.
 * Two Contents, Two Realities: First presented as a position paper at the First International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974.
 * A Christian View of the Church
 * The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century
 * The Church Before the Watching World
 * The Mark of the Christian: Analyzes the balance between the holiness of God and the love of God in the spiritual life of the Bible-believing Christian.
 * Death in the City
 * The Great Evangelical Disaster
 * A Christian View of the West
 * Pollution and the Death of Man. A Christian response to issues concerning ecology.
 * How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture. This is also a film/video series produced and directed by his son Frank Schaeffer.
 * Whatever Happened to the Human Race?  (with future Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop). A Christian response to abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide. This is also a film/video series produced and directed by his son Frank Schaeffer.
 * A Christian Manifesto: Christian principles for secular politics.

In addition to his books, one of the last public lectures Schaeffer delivered was at the Law Faculty, University of Strasbourg. It was published as "Christian Faith and Human Rights", The Simon Greenleaf Law Review, 2 (1982–83) pp. 3–12. Most of his writings during his Bible Presbyterian days have not been collected, nor reprinted in decades.

In addition to the five volume Complete Works listed above there were also two books by Dr. Schaeffer published after his death:

 * Dennis, Lane T. (ed) Letters of Francis A. Schaeffer, Crossway Books, Westchester, 1985.
 * Schaeffer, Francis A. The Finished Work of Christ: The Truth of Romans 1–8, Crossway Books, Wheaton, 1998.

Films
Schaeffer was persuaded to adapt his book How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture to film by Gospel Films, Inc. CEO and executive evangelical media producer Billy Zeoli who pitched the idea of hiring Schaeffer's then recently married son, teenage father, and painter Frank Schaeffer as a producer for the film project. Zeoli was instrumental in providing the Schaeffers with introductions to wealthy American evangelicals who would eventually bankroll the How We Should Then Live film project. This book is still being read and used today in American Universities as well as in various small group studies to help shed light on the contemporary cultural problems of the past and how they have led to many of the issues that America is facing today. Issues such as race, apathy, abortion, and the non-compassionate use of wealth are topics still relevant today. Schaeffer argues that the humanist base for morals is fundamentally a weak base upon which to build a moral framework for society. By contrast, the Bible, understood as the revealed revelation from God is able to provide a fundamentally sound basis for societal norms as well as a base for science. The president of Christian Leaders Institute (CLI), Henry Reyenga Jr., secured rights to post this film series in an ethics class at CLI. This freemium ministry training school lists "deceased" Francis Schaeffer on its faculty.

The American distribution of the book and film was responsible for bringing many evangelical Protestants into the then largely Roman Catholic public protest movement against the United States Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision, supporting legal abortion in the United States.

 * How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (1976). Frank Schaeffer produced his father Francis Schaeffer's film series, which was released with a book by the same title.
 * Whatever Happened to the Human Race?  (1979). A Christian response to abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide, narrated by Francis Schaeffer and future Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop; it was released with a book by the same title.

title: Francis Schaeffer