The term habitation has been used since the beginning of French colonization in America and the Indian Ocean to designate an entire agricultural and industrial estate with a permanent place of residence. In addition to the main house visible here and its outbuildings, Habitation Clément in Martinique also includes the old distillery converted into an interpretation center, aging cellars, a botanical park, and exhibition spaces located in the heart of an agricultural property growing sugar cane. This French term of provincial use (Normandy) is found wherever French settlement took place before the genesis of Creole. At the end of the 19th century, under the influence of North American literature, it was supplanted by the Anglo-Saxon term plantation which in French only refers to the fact of planting seeds or plants in the ground, whereas the word habitation reflects the spatial, monumental, and social framework of colonial development. The estate called habitation was not necessarily large or cultivated by many slaves. It was devoted to various crops (sugar, tobacco, coffee, cocoa, banana, etc.) and speculations according to place and time. On the other hand, the rare domains devoted to breeding bore the name of menagerie (enclosed pastures) and hatte (equivalent to the ranch).