page_title: French colonization of the Americas
section_title: West Indies
hierarchical_section_title: French colonization of the Americas / West Indies
caption_attribution_description: English: Fire in Saint-Domingo 1791, German copper engraving Deutsch: Vorstellung der auf der Französischen Colonie St. Domingo von denen schwartzen Sclaven eingebildete Französischen democratische Freyheit ... zu erwerben gedachten ... [Loose English translation] "On the French colony of St. Domingo, black slaves - through unending brutality - think to win conceited French democratic freedoms. They ruin many hundreds of coffee and sugar plantations and burn the mills, they indiscriminately slaughter all of the whites which fall into their hands, even using a white child as their flag, disgrace women and drag them away to miserable prisons. Created 1791. However, their intentions came to nothing."
context_page_description: The French colonization of the Americas began in the 17th century, and continued on into the following centuries as France established a colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere. France founded colonies in much of eastern North America, on a number of Caribbean islands, and in South America. Most colonies were developed to export products such as fish, rice, sugar, and furs.
  As they colonized the New World, the French established forts and settlements that would become such cities as Quebec and Montreal in Canada; Detroit, Green Bay, St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, Mobile, Biloxi, Baton Rouge and New Orleans in the United States; and Port-au-Prince, Cap-Haïtien in Haiti, Cayenne in French Guiana and São Luís in Brazil.
context_section_description: A major French settlement lay on the island of Hispaniola, where France established the colony of Saint-Domingue on the western third of the island in 1664. Nicknamed the "Pearl of the Antilles", Saint-Domingue became the richest colony in the Caribbean due to slave plantation production of sugar cane. It had the highest slave mortality rate in the western hemisphere. A 1791 slave revolt, the only ever successful slave revolt, began the Haitian Revolution, led to freedom for the colony's slaves in 1794 and, a decade later, complete independence for the country, which renamed itself Haiti. France briefly also ruled the eastern portion of the island, which is now the Dominican Republic.
  During the 17th and 18th centuries, France ruled much of the Lesser Antilles at various times. Islands that came under French rule during part or all of this time include Dominica, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Marie-Galante, Martinique, St. Barthélemy, St. Croix, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Martin, St. Vincent and Tobago. Control of many of these islands was contested between the French, the British and the Dutch; in the case of St. Martin, the island was divided in two, a situation that persists to this day. Great Britain captured some of France's islands during the Seven Years' War and the Napoleonic Wars. Following the latter conflict, France retained control of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Marie-Galante, St. Barthélemy, and its portion of St. Martin; all remain part of France today. Guadeloupe (including Marie-Galante and other nearby islands) and Martinique each is an overseas department of France, while St. Barthélemy and St. Martin each became an overseas collectivity of France in 2007.
caption: Saint-Domingue slave revolt in 1791
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