Gaoulé, Historic plantation house in Le Diamant, Martinique, France

Gaoulé, also called habitation O'Mullane, is a former sugar plantation house in Le Diamant, not a castle. Its long facade of rough light rubble stone and brick has five tall openings with dark louvered wooden shutters, and three shuttered dormer windows project from a pitched roof of reddish-brown terracotta tiles. The property is private.

On 17 May 1717, governor de La Varenne and his intendant, sent by the regent to ban new sugar works and trade with neighbouring islands, were seized at the Bourgeot sugar plantation, now called O'Mullane, during a banquet given by its owner Etienne Bourgeot. Colonists led by colonels Le Vassor de la Touche and du Buc de L'Etang held them, then took them to Anse Latouche in the north and forced them onto a ship for France. The episode, called a gaoulé, had no follow-up.

The name Gaoulé comes from Martinican and Creole speech: cahouler or gahouler means to whisper, and in Creole the word also denotes dance and licentious excess. An official report records an enslaved person saying the whites were making a gaoulé like the Blacks, and the term stuck to the 1717 affair. The house, habitation O'Mullane, is private property.

The house of the Gaoulé, known as habitation O'Mullane, stands on a private property in Le Diamant and is not open to visitors; it can only be seen from outside. From the grounds the Rocher du Diamant is visible offshore. The building is a long rubble-stone house with five shuttered openings and three dormer windows under a terracotta-tiled roof.

The name Gaoulé comes from a Martinican word for an uproar or a forceful demand, and from cahouler or gahouler, to whisper. In Creole it took on the sense of dance and licentious excess. An official report records that an enslaved person said the Whites were making a gaoulé like the Negroes, which is why the term stuck to the 1717 revolt.