Karaikal is a city of the Indian Union Territory of Puducherry. It is the administrative headquarters of the Karaikal District and the second most populated city in the Union Territory after Pondicherry. Located on the Coromandel Coast of Bay of Bengal in South India, it is a coastal enclave and is surrounded by the state of Tamil Nadu in the southern region of Indian peninsula.

The French colonial empire comprised the overseas colonies, protectorates, and mandate territories that came under French rule from the 16th century onward. A distinction is generally made between the "First French colonial empire", that existed until 1814, by which time most of it had been lost or sold, and the "Second French colonial empire", which began with the conquest of Algiers in 1830. On the eve of World War I, France's colonial empire was the second largest in the world after the British Empire.