Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
Information.
SAINT PIERRE and MIQUELON (French: Collectivite territoriale de Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon) is a self-governing territorial overseas collectivity of France, situated in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean near Canada. Area - 242 sq.km. Population - 6080 (2011) Capital - Saint-Pierre. Artifacts belonging to indigenous peoples have been found on Saint-Pierre. However, there was no aboriginal population on the island when the first European arrived. The first European discovery of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon was on 21 October 1520, by the Portuguese Joao Alvares Fagundes. They were made a French possession in 1536 by Jacques Cartier on behalf of the King of France. In 1670, during Jean Talon's tenure as Intendant of New France, a French officer annexed the islands when he found a dozen French fishermen camped there. English ships soon began to harass the French, pillaging their camps and ships. By the early 1700s, the islands were again uninhabited, and were ceded to the British by the Treaty of Utrecht which ended the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713. Under the terms of the 1763 Treaty of Paris, which put an end to the Seven Years' War, France ceded all its North American possessions, but Saint-Pierre and Miquelon were returned to France. France also maintained fishing rights on the coasts of Newfoundland. After the long interlude of British occupation from 1714 to 1763, the islands knew little peace, but witnessed a significant rise in business and population, as they were now the last French territory in North America. Britain invaded and razed the colony in 1778, during the American revolutionary war, and the entire population of 2,000 was sent back to France. By the 1780s, about 1,000 or 1,500 people lived on the islands, their numbers doubling during the fishing season. The French Revolutionary Wars affected the archipelago dramatically: in 1793, the British landed in Saint-Pierre and, the following year, expelled the French population, and tried to install British settlers. The British colony was in turn sacked by French troops in 1796. The Treaty of Amiens of 1802 returned the islands to France, but Britain reoccupied them when hostilities recommenced the next year. The 1814 Treaty of Paris gave them back to France, though Britain occupied them yet again during the Hundred Days War. France then reclaimed the by then uninhabited islands in which all structures and buildings had been destroyed or fallen into disrepair. The islands were resettled in 1816. The settlers were mostly Basques, Bretons and Normans, who were joined by various other elements, particularly from the nearby island of Newfoundland. Only around the middle of the century did increased fishing bring a certain prosperity to the little colony. After the fall of France during World War II, most of the war veterans and sailors in the colony supported the Free French of General Charles de Gaulle. The administrator of the colony, Gilbert de Bournat, sided with the Vichy regime. De Gaulle decided to seize the archipelago, over the opposition of the United States. The general covertly gave Admiral Emile Muselier the order to proceed, resulting in the successful Free French coup de main on Christmas Day 1941. The United States Department of State and Cordell Hull in particular were infuriated by the result. The incident ultimately served to focus the American public opinion on the ambivalence of the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in its dealings with Vichy, and also led to a lasting distrust between De Gaulle and Roosevelt. In a quick referendum the next day, the population endorsed the takeover, and the resounding vote in favour of Free France led Muselier to appoint Lieutenant Alain Savary as governor. After the approval of the 1958 French constitutional referendum, the islands were given the options of becoming fully integrated with France, becoming a self-governing state within the French Community, or preserving the status of overseas territory; it decided to remain a territory. Currency : Euro.
