Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
On the eve of World War I, France's colonial empire was the second-largest in the world after the British Empire. France began to establish colonies in the Americas, the Caribbean, and India in the 16th century but lost most of its possessions after its defeat in the Seven Years' War.
From the 16th to the 17th centuries, the First French colonial empire existed mainly in the Americas and Asia. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the second French colonial empire existed mainly in Africa and Asia. France had about 80 colonies throughout its history, the second most colonies in the world behind only the British Empire. [1]
France began colonizing the Americas in the 16th century and continued into the following centuries as it established a colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere. France established colonies in much of eastern North America, on several Caribbean islands, and in South America. Most colonies were developed to export products such as fish, rice ...
[1] [2] During the 19th and 20th centuries, the French colonial empire was the second largest colonial empire in the world only behind the British Empire; it extended over 13,500,000 km 2 (5,200,000 sq mi) [3] [4] of land at its height in the 1920s and 1930s. In terms of population however, on the eve of World War II, France and her colonial ...
Overseas France (French: France d'outre-mer, also France ultramarine) [note 3] consists of 13 French territories outside Europe, mostly the remnants of the French colonial empire that remained a part of the French state under various statuses after decolonisation. Most are part of the European Union.
Samuel de Champlain overseeing the construction of the Habitation de Québec, in 1608. New France had five colonies or territories, each with its own administration: Canada (the Great Lakes region, the Ohio Valley, and the St. Lawrence River Valley), Acadia (the Gaspé Peninsula, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, St. John's Island, and Île Royale-Cape Breton), Hudson Bay (and James Bay), Terre ...
In parallel, France developed its first colonial empire in Asia, Africa, and in the Americas. In the 16th to the 17th centuries, the First French colonial empire stretched from a total area at its peak in 1680 to over 10,000,000 square kilometres (3,900,000 sq mi), the second-largest empire in the world at the time behind the Spanish Empire.
In the 240 years between Verrazano's voyage of exploration in 1524 and the Conquest of New France in 1763, the French marked the North American continent in many ways. . Whether it was through by land distribution and clearing, the establishment of villages and towns, deploying a network of roads and paths or developing the territory with various constructions, the French colonists transformed ...