Empire · 1534–1980 · Europe

French Colonial Empire

Also known as French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa, Algeria (France), Algeria (FR), Madagascar (France), French Indochina, French Indo-China, Morocco (France), Syria (France), French Cameroons, Congo (France), Fezzan (Frech Lybia), Senegal (FR), Martinique (France), French Somaliland, New France, Louisiana, Cayenne, French Guiana

France's first colonial empire began with Jacques Cartier's voyages to the St Lawrence in 1534 and grew into New France, a vast fur-trading realm reaching down the Mississippi to Louisiana, plus rich sugar islands such as Saint-Domingue worked by enslaved Africans. Defeat by Britain in 1763 cost Canada and most of India, the Haitian Revolution freed Saint-Domingue, and Napoleon sold Louisiana in 1803.

A second empire began with the invasion of Algeria in 1830 and spread across West and Equatorial Africa, Madagascar, Indochina and, after 1919, Syria and Lebanon. Paris governed centrally, claiming a civilising mission and assimilating a small educated elite. After the Second World War, defeat in Vietnam in 1954 and a brutal war in Algeria, independent in 1962, brought most colonies to independence; some islands remain parts of France today.

See it on the map →

Years

1534–1980

Capital

Paris

Greatest extent

1920, about 11.50 million km²

Region

Europe

c. 11.5M km² (Taagepera 1997); most of it in North, West and Central Africa