After a brief examination of the cleavages resulting from colonial subordination in the French West Indies, the paper analyzes the transition from identity claims to political claims and more especially two modalities of the process: the territorialization of partisan structures and the mobilization of local resources. Contradictions involved in the nationalist approach are also studied: attempts at superimposing cultural and political identities are thwarted by the insertion of social actors into a plurality of social and cultural spaces as well as by the multiplicity of allegiances and identification levels.