1.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
2.
Prefectures in France
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There are 101 prefectures in France, one for each department. The official in charge is the prefect, the prefect represents the national government at the local level and as such exercises the powers that are constitutionally attributed to the national government. The prefect issues ordinances written for the application of law, to close a building that does not conform to safety codes. In the past, the prefect was head of the department, but since 1982, there is an exception in Paris and its three surrounding departments. These departments are administered by a prefecture for law enforcement and security purposes, called the Prefecture of Police. The power of law enforcement is usually invested in the mayor in other French communes, the departments are divided into arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons. The chef-lieu darrondissement is the subprefecture, the official in charge is the subprefect (French, sous-préfet. Cantons have relatively few competences, the most important one being the local organisation of elections, administrative divisions of France French National Police
3.
Fort-de-France
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Fort-de-France is the capital of Frances Caribbean overseas department of Martinique. It is also one of the cities in the Caribbean. Exports include sugar, rum, tinned fruit, and cacao, in 1638, Jacques Dyel du Parquet, nephew of Pierre Belain dEsnambuc and first governor of Martinique, decided to have Fort Saint Louis built to protect the city against enemy attacks. The fort was destroyed, and rebuilt in 1669, when Louis XIV appointed the Marquis of Baas as governor general. Under his orders and those of his successors, particularly the Count of Blénac, the name of Fort-Royal was changed to a short-lived Fort-La-Republique during the French Revolution, and finally settled as Fort-de-France sometime in the 19th century. The old name of Fort-Royal is still used today familiarly in its Creole language form of Foyal, the city had its share of disasters, being captured by a British expedition in 1762, partially destroyed by an earthquake in 1839 and devastated by fire in 1890. At the turn of the 20th century, however, Fort-de-France became economically important after the eruption of Mount Pelée destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre in 1902. Until 1918, when its commercial growth began, Fort-de-France had a water supply, was partly surrounded by swamps. Now the swamps are drained to make room for extensive suburbs, Fort-de-France, also known as the Fort of France, lies on Martiniques west coast at the northern entrance to the large Fort-de-France Bay, at the mouth of the Madame River. The city occupies a plain between the hills and the sea but is accessible by road from all parts of the island. Fort Saint Louis in Fort-de-France is a French naval base, as is Degrad des Cannes and it was vandalized in the 1990s, presumably by individuals who blamed her for supporting the reestablishment of slavery on the island. Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport is located in a suburb outside Fort-de-France and is accessible via the A1 autoroute, communes of the Martinique department Official website Mérimée database – Cultural heritage Fort Royal
4.
Departments of France
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In the administrative divisions of France, the department is one of the three levels of government below the national level, between the administrative regions and the commune. There are 96 departments in metropolitan France and 5 overseas departments, each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council. From 1800 to April 2015, they were called general councils, the departments were created in 1791 as a rational replacement of Ancien Régime provinces with a view to strengthen national unity, the title department is used to mean a part of a larger whole. Almost all of them were named after geographical features rather than after historical or cultural territories which could have their own loyalties. The earliest known suggestion of it is from 1764 in the writings of dArgenson and they have inspired similar divisions in many countries, some of them former French colonies. Most French departments are assigned a number, the Official Geographical Code. Some overseas departments have a three-digit number, the number is used, for example, in the postal code, and was until recently used for all vehicle registration plates. For example, inhabitants of Loiret might refer to their department as the 45 and this reform project has since been abandoned. The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René dArgenson to serve as administrative areas purely for the Ponts et Chaussées infrastructure administration, before the French Revolution, France gained territory gradually through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the close of the Ancien Régime, it was organised into provinces, during the period of the Revolution, these were dissolved, partly in order to weaken old loyalties. Their boundaries served two purposes, Boundaries were chosen to break up Frances historical regions in an attempt to erase cultural differences, Boundaries were set so that every settlement in the country was within a days ride of the capital of the department. This was a security measure, intended to keep the national territory under close control. This measure was directly inspired by the Great Terror, during which the government had lost control of rural areas far from any centre of government. The old nomenclature was carefully avoided in naming the new departments, most were named after an areas principal river or other physical features. Even Paris was in the department of Seine, the number of departments, initially 83, was increased to 130 by 1809 with the territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire. Following Napoleons defeats in 1814-1815, the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size, in 1860, France acquired the County of Nice and Savoy, which led to the creation of three new departments. Two were added from the new Savoyard territory, while the department of Alpes-Maritimes was created from Nice, the 89 departments were given numbers based on their alphabetical order. The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe, Moselle, Vosges and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871, following Frances defeat in the Franco-Prussian War
5.
Demonym
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A demonym is a word that identifies residents or natives of a particular place, which is derived from the name of that particular place. It is a neologism, previously gentilic was recorded in English dictionaries, e. g. the Oxford English Dictionary, thus a Thai may be any resident or citizen of Thailand, of any ethnic group, or more narrowly a member of the Thai people. Conversely, some groups of people may be associated with multiple demonyms, for example, a native of the United Kingdom may be called a British person, a Brit, or a Briton. In some languages, when a parallel demonym does not exist, in English, demonyms are capitalized and are often the same as the adjectival form of the place, e. g. Egyptian, Japanese, or Greek. Significant exceptions exist, for instance the adjectival form of Spain is Spanish, English widely includes country-level demonyms such as Ethiopian or Guatemalan and more local demonyms such as Seoulite, Wisconsinite, Chicagoan, Michigander, Fluminense, and Paulista. Some places lack a commonly used and accepted demonym and this poses a particular challenge to those toponymists who research demonyms. The word gentilic comes from the Latin gentilis and the English suffix -ic, the word demonym was derived from the Greek word meaning populace with the suffix for name. National Geographic attributes the term demonym to Merriam-Webster editor Paul Dickson in a recent work from 1990 and it was subsequently popularized in this sense in 1997 by Dickson in his book Labels for Locals. However, in What Do You Call a Person From, a Dictionary of Resident Names attributed the term to George H. Scheetz, in his Names Names, A Descriptive and Prescriptive Onymicon, which is apparently where the term first appears. Several linguistic elements are used to create demonyms in the English language, the most common is to add a suffix to the end of the location name, slightly modified in some instances. Cairo → Cairene Cyrenaica → Cyrene Damascus → Damascene Greece → Greek Nazareth → Nazarene Slovenia → Slovene Often used for Middle Eastern locations and European locations. Kingston-upon-Hull → Hullensian Leeds → Leodensian Spain → Spaniard Savoy → Savoyard -ese is usually considered proper only as an adjective, thus, a Chinese person is used rather than a Chinese. Monaco → Monégasque Menton → Mentonasque Basque Country → Basque Often used for French locations, mostly they are from Africa and the Pacific, and are not generally known or used outside the country concerned. In much of East Africa, a person of an ethnic group will be denoted by a prefix. For example, a person of the Luba people would be a Muluba, the plural form Baluba, similar patterns with minor variations in the prefixes exist throughout on a tribal level. And Fijians who are indigenous Fijians are known as Kaiviti and these demonyms are usually more informal and colloquial. In the United States such informal demonyms frequently become associated with mascots of the sports teams of the state university system. In other countries the origins are often disputed and these will typically be formed using the standard models above
6.
Gross domestic product
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Gross Domestic Product is a monetary measure of the market value of all final goods and services produced in a period. Nominal GDP estimates are used to determine the economic performance of a whole country or region. The OECD defines GDP as a measure of production equal to the sum of the gross values added of all resident and institutional units engaged in production. ”An IMF publication states that GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services - that is. Total GDP can also be broken down into the contribution of industry or sector of the economy. The ratio of GDP to the population of the region is the per capita GDP. William Petty came up with a concept of GDP to defend landlords against unfair taxation during warfare between the Dutch and the English between 1652 and 1674. Charles Davenant developed the method further in 1695, the modern concept of GDP was first developed by Simon Kuznets for a US Congress report in 1934. In this report, Kuznets warned against its use as a measure of welfare, after the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, GDP became the main tool for measuring a countrys economy. The switch from GNP to GDP in the US was in 1991, the history of the concept of GDP should be distinguished from the history of changes in ways of estimating it. The value added by firms is relatively easy to calculate from their accounts, but the value added by the sector, by financial industries. GDP can be determined in three ways, all of which should, in principle, give the same result and they are the production approach, the income approach, or the expenditure approach. The most direct of the three is the approach, which sums the outputs of every class of enterprise to arrive at the total. The income approach works on the principle that the incomes of the factors must be equal to the value of their product. This approach mirrors the OECD definition given above, deduct intermediate consumption from gross value to obtain the gross value added. Gross value added = gross value of output – value of intermediate consumption, value of output = value of the total sales of goods and services plus value of changes in the inventories. The sum of the value added in the various economic activities is known as GDP at factor cost. GDP at factor cost plus indirect taxes less subsidies on products = GDP at producer price, for measuring output of domestic product, economic activities are classified into various sectors. Subtracting each sectors intermediate consumption from gross output gives the GDP at factor cost, adding indirect tax minus subsidies in GDP at factor cost gives the GDP at producer prices
7.
First-level NUTS of the European Union
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The Classification of Territorial Units for Statistics, is a geocode standard for referencing the administrative divisions of countries for statistical purposes. The standard was developed by the European Union, there are three levels of NUTS defined, with two levels of local administrative units below. Not all countries have every level of division, depending on their size, one of the most extreme cases is Luxembourg, which has only LAUs, the three NUTS divisions each correspond to the entire country itself. Below are the first level NUTS regions of the European Union
8.
Island
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An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, an island in a river or a lake island may be called an eyot or ait, and a small island off the coast may be called a holm. A grouping of geographically or geologically related islands is called an archipelago, an island may be described as such, despite the presence of an artificial land bridge. Example, Singapore and its causeway, or the various Dutch delta islands, there are two main types of islands in the sea, continental and oceanic. The word island derives from Middle English iland, from Old English igland, Old English ieg is actually a cognate of Swedish ö and German Aue, and related to Latin aqua. There is a difference between islands and continents in terms of geology, continents sit on continental lithosphere which is part of tectonic plates floating high on Earths mantle. Oceanic crust is also part of tectonic plates, but it is denser than continental lithosphere, Islands are either extensions of the oceanic crust or geologically they are part of some continent sitting on continental lithosphere. This holds true for Australia, which sits on its own continental lithosphere, continental islands are bodies of land that lie on the continental shelf of a continent. A special type of island is the microcontinental island, which is created when a continent is rifted. Examples are Madagascar and Socotra off Africa, the Kerguelen Islands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, another subtype is an island or bar formed by deposition of tiny rocks where water current loses some of its carrying capacity. While some are transitory and may disappear if the volume or speed of the current changes, others are stable, oceanic islands are islands that do not sit on continental shelves. The vast majority are volcanic in origin, such as Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, the few oceanic islands that are not volcanic are tectonic in origin and arise where plate movements have lifted up the ocean floor above the surface. Examples are Saint Peter and Paul Rocks in the Atlantic Ocean, one type of volcanic oceanic island is found in a volcanic island arc. These islands arise from volcanoes where the subduction of one plate under another is occurring, examples are the Aleutian Islands, the Mariana Islands, and most of Tonga in the Pacific Ocean. The only examples in the Atlantic Ocean are some of the Lesser Antilles, another type of volcanic oceanic island occurs where an oceanic rift reaches the surface. There are two examples, Iceland, which is the second largest volcanic island, and Jan Mayen. A third type of oceanic island is formed over volcanic hotspots. A hotspot is more or less stationary relative to the tectonic plate above it
9.
Regions of France
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France is divided into 18 administrative regions, including 13 metropolitan regions and 5 overseas regions. The current legal concept of region was adopted in 1982, the term région was officially created by the Law of Decentralisation, which also gave regions their legal status. The first direct elections for representatives took place on 16 March 1986. In 2016, the number of regions was reduced from 27 to 18 through amalgamation, in 2014, the French parliament passed a law reducing the number of metropolitan regions from 22 to 13 with effect from 1 January 2016. However, the region of Upper and Lower Normandy is simply called Normandy. Permanent names were to be proposed by the new regional councils by 1 July 2016, the legislation defining the new regions also allowed the Centre region to officially change its name to Centre-Val de Loire with effect from January 2015. Two regions, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, opted to retain their interim names, between 1982 and 2015, there were 22 regions in Metropolitan France. Before 2011, there were four regions, in 2011 Mayotte became the fifth. Regions lack separate legislative authority and therefore cannot write their own statutory law and they levy their own taxes and, in return, receive a decreasing part of their budget from the central government, which gives them a portion of the taxes it levies. They also have considerable budgets managed by a council made up of representatives voted into office in regional elections. A regions primary responsibility is to build and furnish high schools, in March 2004, the French central government unveiled a controversial plan to transfer regulation of certain categories of non-teaching school staff to the regional authorities. Critics of this plan contended that tax revenue was insufficient to pay for the costs. In addition, regions have considerable power over infrastructural spending, e. g. education, public transit, universities and research. This has meant that the heads of regions such as Île-de-France or Rhône-Alpes can be high-profile positions. Number of regions controlled by each coalition since 1986, Overseas region is a recent designation, given to the overseas departments that have similar powers to those of the regions of metropolitan France. Radio France Internationale in English Overseas regions Ministère de lOutre-Mer some explanations about the past and current developments of DOMs and TOMs
10.
Lesser Antilles
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The Lesser Antilles are a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea. Most form a long, partly volcanic island arc between the Greater Antilles to the north-west and the continent of South America, the islands form the eastern boundary of the Caribbean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean. Together, the Lesser Antilles and the Greater Antilles compose the Antilles, when combined with the Lucayan Archipelago, all three are known as the West Indies. The islands of the Lesser Antilles are divided into three groups, the Windward Islands in the south, the Leeward Islands in the north, and the Leeward Antilles in the west. The Windward Islands are so called because they were more windward to sailing ships arriving in the New World than the Leeward Islands, the trans-Atlantic currents and winds that provided the fastest route across the ocean brought these ships to the rough dividing line between the Windward and Leeward Islands. The Leeward Antilles consist of the Dutch ABC islands just off the coast of Venezuela, the Lesser Antilles more or less coincide with the outer edge of the Caribbean Plate. Many of the islands were formed as a result of the subduction of oceanic crust of the South American Plate under the Caribbean Plate in the Lesser Antilles subduction zone. This process is ongoing and is not only for many of the islands. The Lesser Antilles are divided into eight independent nations and numerous dependent, over one third of the total area and population of the Lesser Antilles lies within Trinidad and Tobago, a sovereign nation comprising the two southernmost islands of the Windward Island chain. Several islands along the north coast of Venezuela and politically part of country are also occasionally considered part of the Lesser Antilles. These are listed in the section below, the main Lesser Antilles are, Virgin Islands St. Thomas St. John St. They are the most southern islands of the Caribbean region, a Brief History of the Caribbean. New York, Facts on File,1992, the dictionary definition of Lesser Antilles at Wiktionary
11.
Caribbean Sea
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The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. The entire area of the Caribbean Sea, the islands of the West Indies. The Caribbean Sea is one of the largest seas and has an area of about 2,754,000 km2, the seas deepest point is the Cayman Trough, between the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, at 7,686 m below sea level. The Caribbean coastline has many gulfs and bays, the Gulf of Gonâve, Gulf of Venezuela, Gulf of Darién, Golfo de los Mosquitos, Gulf of Paria, the Caribbean Sea has the worlds second biggest barrier reef, the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. It runs 1,000 km along the coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, the name Caribbean derives from the Caribs, one of the regions dominant Native American groups at the time of European contact during the late 15th century. During the first century of development, Spanish dominance in the region remained undisputed, from the 16th century, Europeans visiting the Caribbean region identified the South Sea as opposed to the North Sea. The Caribbean Sea had been unknown to the populations of Eurasia until 1492, at that time the Western Hemisphere in general was unknown to Europeans. Following the discovery of the islands by Columbus, the area was colonised by several Western cultures. As of 2015 the area is home to 22 island territories, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Caribbean Sea as follows, On the North. In the Windward Channel – a line joining Caleta Point and Pearl Point in Haïti, in the Mona Passage – a line joining Cape Engano and the extreme of Agujereada in Puerto Rico. From Galera Point through Trinidad to Galeota Point and thence to Baja Point in Venezuela, note that, although Barbados is an island on the same continental shelf, it is considered to be in the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Caribbean Sea. The Caribbean Sea is an oceanic sea largely situated on the Caribbean Plate, the Caribbean Sea is separated from the ocean by several island arcs of various ages. The youngest stretches from the Lesser Antilles to the Virgin Islands to the north east of Trinidad, the larger islands in the northern part of the sea Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica and Puerto Rico lie on an older island arc. The geological age of the Caribbean Sea is estimated to be between 160 and 180 million years and was formed by a fracture that split the supercontinent called Pangea in the Mesozoic Era. It is assumed the proto-caribbean basin existed in the Devonian period, in the early Carboniferous movement of Gondwana to the north and its convergence with the Euramerica basin decreased in size. The next stage of the Caribbean Seas formation began in the Triassic, powerful rifting led to the formation of narrow troughs, stretching from modern Newfoundland to the west coast of the Gulf of Mexico which formed siliciclastic sedimentary rocks. In the early Jurassic due to powerful marine transgression, water broke into the present area of the Gulf of Mexico creating a vast shallow pool, the emergence of deep basins in the Caribbean occurred during the Middle Jurassic rifting. The emergence of these marked the beginning of the Atlantic Ocean
12.
Guadeloupe
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Guadeloupe is an insular region of France located in the Leeward Islands, part of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. Administratively, it is a region consisting of a single overseas department. With a land area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 400,132 as of January 2015. Guadeloupes two main islands are Basse-Terre to the west and Grande-Terre to the east, which are separated by a strait that is crossed with bridges. They are often referred to as a single island, the department also includes the Dependencies of Guadeloupe, which include the smaller islands of Marie-Galante and La Désirade, and the Îles des Saintes. Guadeloupe, like the other departments, is an integral part of France. As a constituent territory of the European Union and the Eurozone, as an overseas department, however, it is not part of the Schengen Area. The prefecture of Guadeloupe is the city of Basse-Terre, which lies on the island of the same name, the official language is French, and virtually the entire population except recent arrivals from metropolitan France also speak Antillean Creole. Christopher Columbus named the island Santa María de Guadalupe in 1493 after the Virgin Mary, venerated in the Spanish town of Guadalupe, the island was called Karukera by the Arawak people, who settled on there in 300 AD/CE. During the 8th century, the Caribs came and killed the population of Amerindians on the island. During his second trip to the Americas, in November 1493, Christopher Columbus became the first European to land on Guadeloupe, while seeking fresh water. He called it Santa María de Guadalupe de Extremadura, after the image of the Virgin Mary venerated at the Spanish monastery of Villuercas, in Guadalupe, the expedition set ashore just south of Capesterre, but left no settlers behind. Columbus is credited with discovering the pineapple on the island of Guadeloupe in 1493 and he called it piña de Indias, which can be correctly translated as pine cone of the Indies. During the 17th century, the Caribs fought against the Spanish settlers, after successful settlement on the island of St. Due to Martiniques inhospitable nature, the duo resolved to settle in Guadeloupe in 1635, took possession of the island and it was annexed to the kingdom of France in 1674. Over the next century, the British seized the island several times, the economy benefited from the lucrative sugar trade, which commenced during the closing decades of the 17th century. Guadeloupe produced more sugar than all the British islands combined, worth about £6 million a year, the British captured Guadeloupe in 1759. The British government decided that Canada was strategically important and kept Canada while returning Guadeloupe to France in the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years War
13.
Overseas department
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An overseas department is a department of France that is outside metropolitan France. The overseas departments should not be confused with the overseas collectivities, each overseas department is also an overseas region. In 1798 the Russian Admiral Ushakov evicted the French from these islands, and though France regained them in 1802, since 1982, following the French government’s policy of decentralisation, overseas departments have elected regional councils with powers similar to those of the regions of metropolitan France. Following a yes vote in a referendum held on March 29,2009, the overseas collectivity Saint Pierre and Miquelon was an overseas department from 1976 to 1985
14.
Windward Islands
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The Windward Islands are the southern, generally larger islands of the Lesser Antilles, within the West Indies. They lie south of the Leeward Islands, between latitudes 12° and 16° N and longitudes 60° and 62° W in one definition, as a group they start from Dominica and reach southward to the North of Trinidad & Tobago. The trans-Atlantic currents and winds that provided the fastest route across the ocean brought these ships to the dividing line between the Windward and Leeward islands. Dominica is the line between the Windward and Leeward islands. Guadeloupe and the islands to the south were designated Windward Islands, later on, all islands north of Martinique became known as the Leeward Islands. The chain of Windward Islands forms a part of the easternmost boundary of the Caribbean Sea, most of the present Windward Islands were once colonial island territories of France, also known as the French Antilles
15.
Saint Lucia
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Saint Lucia is a sovereign island country in the eastern Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the Atlantic Ocean. Part of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and it covers a land area of 617 km2 and reported a population of 165,595 in the 2010 census. The French were the islands first European settlers and they signed a treaty with the native Carib Indians in 1660. England took control of the island from 1663 to 1667, in ensuing years, it was at war with France 14 times, and rule of the island changed frequently. In 1814, the British took definitive control of the island, because it switched so often between British and French control, Saint Lucia was also known as the Helen of the West Indies. Representative government came about in 1840, from 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the Federation of the West Indies. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state of the Commonwealth of Nations associated with the United Kingdom, Saint Lucia is a mixed jurisdiction, meaning that it has a legal system based in part on both the civil law and English common law. The Civil Code of St. Lucia of 1867 was based on the Quebec Civil Code of 1866 and it is also a member of La Francophonie. One of the Windward Islands, Saint Lucia was named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse by the French, the islands first European settlers, the French pirate François le Clerc frequently visited Saint Lucia in the 1550s. It was not until around 1600 that the first European camp was started by the Dutch at what is now Vieux Fort, in 1605 an English vessel called the Olive Branch was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia. After five weeks only 19 survived due to disease and conflict with the Caribs, the French officially claimed the island in 1635. The English attempted the next European settlement in 1639, and that too was wiped out by Caribs, in 1643 a French expedition sent out from Martinique established a permanent settlement on the island. De Rousselan was appointed the governor, took a Carib wife. In 1664, Thomas Warner claimed Saint Lucia for England and he brought 1,000 men to defend it from the French, but after two years, only 89 survived with the rest dying mostly due to disease. In 1666 the French West India Company resumed control of the island, in 1722, George I of Great Britain granted both Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent to The 2nd Duke of Montagu. He in turn appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, Uring went to the islands with a group of seven ships, and established settlement at Petit Carenage. Unable to get support from British warships, he and the new colonists were quickly run off by the French. During the Seven Years War Britain occupied Saint Lucia for a year, Britain handed the island back to the French at the Treaty of Paris in 1763
16.
Greater Antilles
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The Greater Antilles is a grouping of the larger islands in the Caribbean Sea, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands. The Greater Antilles constitute nearly 90% of the mass of the entire West Indies. The remainder of the land belongs to the archipelago of the Lesser Antilles, the Lucayan Archipelago is not considered to be a part of the Antilles archipelagoes but rather of the North Atlantic. Cohen, S. Groene, J. Werner, L. Vladimir, hiller, H. L. Caribbean, The Greater Antilles, Bermuda, Bahamas. Anolis Lizards of the Caribbean, Ecology, Evolution, and Plate Tectonics, Ecology, Evolution, oxford Series in Ecology and Evolution. A Brief History of the Caribbean, new York, Facts on File,1992. Media related to Greater Antilles at Wikimedia Commons
17.
Barbados
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Barbados is a sovereign island country in the Lesser Antilles, in the Americas. It is 34 kilometres in length and up to 23 km in width, Barbados is outside of the principal Atlantic hurricane belt. Inhabited by Kalinago people since the 13th century, and prior to that by other Amerindians, Barbados was visited by Spanish navigators in the late 15th century and it first appeared in a Spanish map in 1511. The Portuguese visited the island in 1536, but they left it unclaimed, an English ship, the Olive Blossom, arrived in Barbados in 1625, its men took possession of it in the name of King James I. In 1627, the first permanent settlers arrived from England, and it became an English, in 1966, Barbados became an independent state and Commonwealth realm with the British Monarch as hereditary head of state. It has a population of 280,121 people, predominantly of African descent, despite being classified as an Atlantic island, Barbados is considered to be a part of the Caribbean, where it is ranked as a leading tourist destination. Forty percent of the come from the UK, with the US. In 2014, Transparency Internationals Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Barbados joint second in the Americas, the name Barbados is either the Portuguese word Barbados or the Spanish equivalent los Barbados, both meaning the bearded ones. In 1519, a map produced by the Genoese mapmaker Visconte Maggiolo showed and named Barbados in its correct position, furthermore, the island of Barbuda in the Leewards is very similar in name and was once named Las Barbudas by the Spanish. It is uncertain which European nation arrived first in Barbados, one lesser known source points to earlier-revealed works predating contemporary sources indicating it could have been the Spanish. Others believe the Portuguese, en route to Brazil, were the first Europeans to come upon the island, colloquially Barbadians refer to their home island as Bim or other nicknames associated with Barbados includes Bimshire. The origin is uncertain but several theories exist, the name could have arisen due to the relatively large percentage of enslaved Igbo people from modern-day southeastern Nigeria arriving in Barbados in the 18th century. The words Bim and Bimshire are recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary, another possible source for Bim is reported to be in the Agricultural Reporter of 25 April 1868, where the Rev. N. Greenidge suggested the listing of Bimshire as a county of England. Expressly named were Wiltshire, Hampshire, Berkshire and Bimshire, lastly, in the Daily Argosy of 1652 there is a reference to Bim as a possible corruption of Byam, the name of a Royalist leader against the Parliamentarians. That source suggested the followers of Byam became known as Bims, amerindian settlement of Barbados dates to about the 4th to 7th centuries AD, by a group known as the Saladoid-Barrancoid. In the 13th century, the Kalinago arrived from South America, the Spanish and Portuguese briefly claimed Barbados from the late 16th to the 17th centuries. The Arawaks are believed to have fled to neighbouring islands, apart from possibly displacing the Caribs, the Spanish and Portuguese made little impact and left the island uninhabited. Some Arawaks migrated from British Guiana in the 19th century and continue to live in Barbados, during the Cromwellian era this included a large number of prisoners-of-war, vagrants and people who were illicitly kidnapped, who were forcibly transported to the island and sold as servants
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Dominica
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Dominica, officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is a sovereign island country. The capital, Roseau, is located on the side of the island. It is part of the Windward islands in the Lesser Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean Sea, the island lies south-southeast of Guadeloupe and northwest of Martinique. Its area is 750 square kilometres and the highest point is Morne Diablotins, the population was 72,301 at the 2014 census. Great Britain took it over in 1763 after the Seven Years War, the island republic gained independence in 1978. Its name is pronounced with emphasis on the syllable, related to its French name of Dominique. Dominica has been nicknamed the Nature Isle of the Caribbean for its natural beauty. It is the youngest island in the Lesser Antilles, still being formed by geothermal-volcanic activity, the island has lush mountainous rainforests, and is the home of many rare plants, animals, and bird species. There are xeric areas in some of the coastal regions. The Sisserou parrot, also known as the amazon and found only on Dominica, is the islands national bird. Dominicas economy depends on tourism and agriculture, the precolonial inhabitants were the Island Caribs. The name comes from the Latin word dies Dominica for Sunday and its pre-Columbian name by the Caribs was Wai‘tu kubuli, which means Tall is her body. Spain had little success in colonising Dominica, in 1632, the French Compagnie des Îles de lAmérique claimed it and other Petite Antilles for France, but no physical occupation took place. Between 1642 and 1650, French missionary Raymond Breton became the first regular European visitor to the island, in 1660, the French and English agreed that Dominica and St. Vincent should not be settled, but left to the Caribs as neutral territory. But its natural resources attracted expeditions of English and French foresters, in 1690, the French established their first permanent settlements. French woodcutters from Martinique and Guadeloupe began to set up camps to supply the French islands with wood. They brought the first enslaved people from West Africa to Dominique, in 1715, a revolt of poor white smallholders in the north of Martinique, known as La Gaoulé, caused many to migrate to southern Dominique where they set up smallholdings. Meanwhile, French families and others from Guadeloupe settled in the north, already installed in Martinique and Guadeloupe and cultivating sugarcane, the French gradually developed plantations in Dominique for coffee
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European Union
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The European Union is a political and economic union of 28 member states that are located primarily in Europe. It has an area of 4,475,757 km2, the EU has developed an internal single market through a standardised system of laws that apply in all member states. Within the Schengen Area, passport controls have been abolished, a monetary union was established in 1999 and came into full force in 2002, and is composed of 19 EU member states which use the euro currency. The EU operates through a system of supranational and intergovernmental decision-making. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community, the community and its successors have grown in size by the accession of new member states and in power by the addition of policy areas to its remit. While no member state has left the EU or its antecedent organisations, the Maastricht Treaty established the European Union in 1993 and introduced European citizenship. The latest major amendment to the basis of the EU. The EU as a whole is the largest economy in the world, additionally,27 out of 28 EU countries have a very high Human Development Index, according to the United Nations Development Programme. In 2012, the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, through the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the EU has developed a role in external relations and defence. The union maintains permanent diplomatic missions throughout the world and represents itself at the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G7, because of its global influence, the European Union has been described as an emerging superpower. After World War II, European integration was seen as an antidote to the nationalism which had devastated the continent. 1952 saw the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, the supporters of the Community included Alcide De Gasperi, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, and Paul-Henri Spaak. These men and others are credited as the Founding fathers of the European Union. In 1957, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany signed the Treaty of Rome and they also signed another pact creating the European Atomic Energy Community for co-operation in developing nuclear energy. Both treaties came into force in 1958, the EEC and Euratom were created separately from the ECSC, although they shared the same courts and the Common Assembly. The EEC was headed by Walter Hallstein and Euratom was headed by Louis Armand, Euratom was to integrate sectors in nuclear energy while the EEC would develop a customs union among members. During the 1960s, tensions began to show, with France seeking to limit supranational power, Jean Rey presided over the first merged Commission. In 1973, the Communities enlarged to include Denmark, Ireland, Norway had negotiated to join at the same time, but Norwegian voters rejected membership in a referendum
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Euro
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Outside of Europe, a number of overseas territories of EU members also use the euro as their currency. Additionally,210 million people worldwide as of 2013 use currencies pegged to the euro, the euro is the second largest reserve currency as well as the second most traded currency in the world after the United States dollar. The name euro was adopted on 16 December 1995 in Madrid. The euro was introduced to world markets as an accounting currency on 1 January 1999. While the euro dropped subsequently to US$0.8252 within two years, it has traded above the U. S. dollar since the end of 2002, peaking at US$1.6038 on 18 July 2008. In July 2012, the euro fell below US$1.21 for the first time in two years, following concerns raised over Greek debt and Spains troubled banking sector, as of 26 March 2017, the euro–dollar exchange rate stands at ~ US$1.07. The euro is managed and administered by the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank, as an independent central bank, the ECB has sole authority to set monetary policy. The Eurosystem participates in the printing, minting and distribution of notes and coins in all states. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty obliges most EU member states to adopt the euro upon meeting certain monetary and budgetary convergence criteria, all nations that have joined the EU since 1993 have pledged to adopt the euro in due course. Since 5 January 2002, the central banks and the ECB have issued euro banknotes on a joint basis. Euro banknotes do not show which central bank issued them, Eurosystem NCBs are required to accept euro banknotes put into circulation by other Eurosystem members and these banknotes are not repatriated. The ECB issues 8% of the value of banknotes issued by the Eurosystem. In practice, the ECBs banknotes are put into circulation by the NCBs and these liabilities carry interest at the main refinancing rate of the ECB. The euro is divided into 100 cents, in Community legislative acts the plural forms of euro and cent are spelled without the s, notwithstanding normal English usage. Otherwise, normal English plurals are used, with many local variations such as centime in France. All circulating coins have a side showing the denomination or value. Due to the plurality in the European Union, the Latin alphabet version of euro is used. For the denominations except the 1-, 2- and 5-cent coins, beginning in 2007 or 2008 the old map is being replaced by a map of Europe also showing countries outside the Union like Norway
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French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
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Antillean Creole
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Antillean Creole is a French-based creole, which is primarily spoken in the Lesser Antilles. Its grammar and vocabulary include elements of Carib and African languages, Antillean Creole is related to Haitian Creole but has a number of distinctive features, however, they are mutually intelligible. The language was more widely spoken in the Lesser Antilles. While the islands of Dominica and Saint Lucia are officially English-speaking, there are efforts to preserve the use of Antillean Creole, as well as in Trinidad & Tobago and its neighbour, Venezuela. In recent decades, Creole has gone from being seen as a sign of lower status, banned in school playgrounds. Since the 1970s, there has been a revival of Creole in the French-speaking islands of the Lesser Antilles, with writers such as Raphaël Confiant. Edouard Glissant has written theoretically and poetically about its significance and its history, Dominican, Grenadian, St. Lucian, Trinidadian, Brazilian and Venezuelan speakers of Antillean Creole call the language patois. It is also spoken in various Creole-speaking immigrant communities in the United States Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, Antillean Creole has approximately 1 million speakers and is a means of communication for migrant populations traveling between neighbouring English- and French-speaking territories. Pierre Belain dEsnambuc was a French trader and adventurer in the Caribbean who established the first permanent French colony, Saint-Pierre, Belain sailed to the Caribbean in 1625, hoping to establish a French settlement on the island of St. Christopher. In 1626, he returned to France, where he won the support of Cardinal Richelieu to establish French colonies in the region, Richelieu became a shareholder in the Compagnie de Saint-Christophe, created to accomplish this with dEsnambuc at its head. The company was not particularly successful, and Richelieu had it reorganized as the Compagnie des Îles de lAmérique, in 1635, dEsnambuc sailed to Martinique with one hundred French settlers to clear land for sugarcane plantations. After six months on Martinique, dEsnambuc returned to St. Christopher and his nephew, Jacques Dyel du Parquet, inherited dEsnambucs authority over the French settlements in the Caribbean. Dyel du Parquet became governor of the island and he remained in Martinique and did not concern himself with the other islands. The French permanently settled on Martinique and Guadeloupe after being driven off Saint Kitts, Fort Royal on Martinique was a major port for French battle ships in the region from which the French were able to explore the region. In 1638, Dyel du Parquet decided to have Fort Saint Louis built to protect the city against enemy attacks, the king would name the governor general of the company, and the company would name he governors of the various islands. However, by the late 1640s, Mazarin had little interest in colonial affairs, in 1651, it dissolved itself, selling its exploitation rights to various parties. The Du Paquet family bought Martinique, Grenada, and Saint Lucia for 60,000 livres, the sieur dHouël bought Guadeloupe, Marie-Galante, La Desirade and the Saintes. The Knights of Malta bought Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin, which were made dependencies of Guadeloupe, in 1665, the Knights sold the islands that they had acquired to the newly formed Compagnie des Indes occidentales
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Christopher Columbus
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Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, colonizer, and citizen of the Republic of Genoa. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean and those voyages and his efforts to establish permanent settlements on the island of Hispaniola initiated the European colonization of the New World. Western imperialism and economic competition were emerging among European kingdoms through the establishment of routes and colonies. During his first voyage in 1492, he reached the New World instead of arriving at Japan as he had intended, landing on an island in the Bahamas archipelago that he named San Salvador. Over the course of three voyages, he visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, as well as the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Central America. These voyages had, therefore, an impact in the historical development of the modern Western world. He spearheaded the transatlantic trade and has been accused by several historians of initiating the genocide of the Hispaniola natives. Columbus himself saw his accomplishments primarily in the light of spreading the Christian religion, Columbus never admitted that he had reached a continent previously unknown to Europeans, rather than the East Indies for which he had set course. He called the inhabitants of the lands that he visited indios, the name Christopher Columbus is the Anglicisation of the Latin Christophorus Columbus. His name in Italian is Cristoforo Colombo and, in Spanish and he was born before 31 October 1451 in the territory of the Republic of Genoa, though the exact location remains disputed. His father was Domenico Colombo, a wool weaver who worked both in Genoa and Savona and who also owned a cheese stand at which young Christopher worked as a helper. Bartolomeo, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo were his brothers, Bartolomeo worked in a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood. He also had a sister named Bianchinetta, Columbus never wrote in his native language, which is presumed to have been a Genoese variety of Ligurian. In one of his writings, he says he went to sea at the age of 10, in 1470, the Columbus family moved to Savona, where Domenico took over a tavern. In the same year, Christopher was on a Genoese ship hired in the service of René of Anjou to support his attempt to conquer the Kingdom of Naples. Some modern historians have argued that he was not from Genoa but, instead and these competing hypotheses have generally been discounted by mainstream scholars. In 1473, Columbus began his apprenticeship as business agent for the important Centurione, Di Negro, later, he allegedly made a trip to Chios, an Aegean island then ruled by Genoa. In May 1476, he took part in a convoy sent by Genoa to carry valuable cargo to northern Europe
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Trade winds
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Trade winds also transport African dust westward across the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean Sea, as well as portions of southeastern North America. Shallow cumulus clouds are seen within trade wind regimes, and are capped from becoming taller by a trade wind inversion, the weaker the trade winds become, the more rainfall can be expected in the neighboring landmasses. The term trade winds originally derives from the fourteenth century late Middle English word trade. The Portuguese recognized the importance of the winds in navigation in both the north and south Atlantic ocean as early as the 15th century. From West Africa, the Portuguese had to sail away from continental Portugal and they could then turn northeast, to the area around the Azores islands, and finally east to mainland Europe. They also learned that to reach South Africa, they needed to go far out in the ocean, head for Brazil, following the African coast southbound means upwind in the Southern hemisphere. In the Pacific ocean, the wind circulation, which included both the trade wind easterlies and higher-latitude Westerlies, was unknown to Europeans until Andres de Urdanetas voyage in 1565. The captain of a sailing ship seeks a course along which the winds can be expected to blow in the direction of travel, for example, Manila galleons could not sail into the wind at all. Between 1847 and 1849, Matthew Fontaine Maury collected enough information to create wind, as part of the Hadley cell circulation, surface air flows toward the equator while the flow aloft is towards the poles. A low-pressure area of calm, light winds near the equator is known as the doldrums, near-equatorial trough, intertropical front. When located within a region, this zone of low pressure. Around 30° in both hemispheres, air begins to descend toward the surface in subtropical high-pressure belts known as subtropical ridges. The subsident air is dry because as it descends, the temperature increases, but the absolute humidity remains constant. This warm, dry air is known as an air mass. An increase of temperature with height is known as a temperature inversion, when it occurs within a trade wind regime, it is known as a trade wind inversion. The surface air flows from these subtropical high-pressure belts toward the Equator is deflected toward the west in both hemispheres by the Coriolis effect. These winds blow predominantly from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere, the trade winds of both hemispheres meet at the doldrums. As they blow across tropical regions, air masses heat up over lower latitudes due to direct sunlight
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Voyages of Christopher Columbus
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For a very long time, it was believed that Columbus and his crew had been the first Europeans to make landfall in the Americas. Columbus was an Italian–born navigator sailing for the Crown of Castile in search of a route to Asia, to access the sources of spices. This led to the discovery of a New World between Europe and Asia, Columbuss voyages led to the widespread knowledge that a new continent existed west of Europe and east of Asia. This breakthrough in science led to the exploration and colonization of the New World by Spain and other European sea powers. The search for a route to Asia continued in 1513 when Vasco Nuñez de Balboa crossed the narrow Isthmus of Panama to become the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean. The search was completed in 1521, when the Castilian Magellan expedition sailed across the Pacific, Portugal had been the main European power interested in pursuing trade routes overseas. Their next-door neighbors, Castile had been slower to begin exploring the Atlantic due to the bigger land area it had to re-conquer from the Moors. In 1492 the joint rulers of the Spanish nation conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada and he proposed the king equip three sturdy ships and grant Columbus one years time to sail out west into the Atlantic, search for a western route to India, and return. Columbus also requested he be made Great Admiral of the Ocean Sea, appointed governor of any and all lands he discovered, the king submitted the proposal to his experts, who rejected it after several years. It was their opinion that Columbuss estimation of a travel distance of 2,400 miles was, in fact. In 1488 Columbus appealed to the court of Portugal, receiving a new invitation for an audience with King John II and this also proved unsuccessful, in part because not long afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal following a successful rounding of the southern tip of Africa. With an eastern sea route now under its control, Portugal was no longer interested in trailblazing a western route to Asia crossing unknown seas. Columbus traveled from Portugal to Spain to convince the Catholic Monarchs of Spain to finance the expedition, King Ferdinand II of Aragon married Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1469, uniting the two largest kingdoms into what would later be the Spanish Crown. They were known jointly as the Catholic Monarchs, and ruled their kingdoms independently, Columbus was granted an audience with them, on May 1,1489, he presented his plans to Queen Isabella, who referred them to a committee. They pronounced the idea impractical, and advised the monarchs not to support the proposed venture, after continually asking, nagging, begging, and crying for the monarchs to support his plan at the royal court and enduring two years of negotiations, Columbus finally succeeded in January 1492. Queen Isabellas forces had just conquered the Moorish Emirate of Granada, Isabella and Ferdinand received Columbus in the Alcázar in Córdoba to support his plans. The monarchs left it to the treasurer to shift funds among various royal accounts on behalf of the enterprise. Columbus was to be made Admiral of the Seas and would receive a portion of all profits, the terms were unusually generous but, as his son later wrote, the monarchs were not confident of his return
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Hispaniola
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Hispaniola is the 22nd-largest island in the world, located in the Caribbean island group, the Greater Antilles. It is the second largest island in the Caribbean after Cuba, two sovereign nations share the 76, 192-square-kilometre island. The only other shared island in the Caribbean is Saint Martin, Hispaniola is the site of the first permanent European settlement in the Americas, founded by Christopher Columbus on his voyages in 1492 and 1493. The island was called by various names by its native people, fernández de Oviedo and de las Casas both recorded that the island was called Haiti by the Taíno. DAnghiera added another name, Quizqueia, but later shows that the word does not seem to derive from the original Arawak Taíno language. When Columbus took possession of the island in 1492, he named it Insula Hispana, meaning the Spanish Island in Latin and La Isla Española, meaning the Spanish Island, in Spanish. De las Casas shortened the name to Española, and when d‘Anghiera detailed his account of the island in Latin, he rendered its name as Hispaniola. Due to Taíno, Spanish and French influences on the island, historically the whole island was referred to as Haiti, Hayti, Santo Domingo, St. Domingue. The name Haïti was adopted by Haitian revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1804, as the name of independent Saint-Domingue. It was also adopted as the name of independent Santo Domingo, as the Republic of Spanish Haiti. Christopher Columbus inadvertently landed on the island during his first voyage across the Atlantic in 1492, where his flagship, a contingent of men were left at an outpost christened La Navidad, on the north coast of present-day Haiti. The island was inhabited by the Taíno, one of the indigenous Arawak peoples, the Taino were at first tolerant of Columbus and his crew, and helped him to construct La Navidad on what is now Môle-Saint-Nicolas, Haiti, in December 1492. European colonization of the began in earnest the following year. In 1496 the town of Nueva Isabela was founded, after being destroyed by a hurricane, it was rebuilt on the opposite side of the Ozama River and called Santo Domingo. It is the oldest permanent European settlement in the Americas, several 16th century writers estimated the 1492 population of Hispaniola at over 1 million people. Twentieth-century estimates of the range from 60,000 to 8,000,000. Harsh enslavement by Spanish colonists, redirection of food supplies and labor towards the colonists, had a impact on both mortality and fertility over the first quarter century. Colonial administrators and Dominican and Hyeronimite priests observed that the search for gold, demographic data from two provinces in 1514 shows a low birth rate consistent with a 3. 5% annual population decline
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Island Caribs
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The Island Caribs, also known as the Kalinago or simply Caribs, are an indigenous people of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. They may have descended from the Mainland Caribs of South America, at the time of Spanish contact, the Caribs were one of the dominant groups in the Caribbean, which owes its name to them. They lived throughout the Windward Islands, Dominica, and possibly the southern Leeward Islands, historically it was thought their ancestors were mainland Caribs who conquered the islands from their previous inhabitants, known as the Igneri. In the early period, the Caribs had a reputation as warriors who raided neighboring islands. Early Europeans claimed that they practiced cannibalism – the word derives from a corruption of their name. Today, the Caribs and their descendants continue to live in the Antilles, the Garifuna or Black Caribs, a group of mixed Carib and African ancestry, also live principally in Central America. The Caribs are believed to have migrated from the Orinoco River area in South America to settle in the Caribbean islands about 1200 AD, the Taíno had settled the island chains earlier in history, migrating from the mainland. Caribs traded with the Eastern Taíno of the Caribbean Islands, the Caribs produced the silver products which Ponce de Leon found in Taíno communities. None of the insular Amerindians mined for gold but obtained it by trade from the mainland, the Caribs were skilled boat builders and sailors. They appeared to have owed their dominance in the Caribbean basin to their mastery of warfare, according to Floyd, The question arose in Columbuss time whether Indians could be enslaved and Queen Isabel had ruled against it. These attacks and the some of the perpetrators, at least, were cannibals. On 3 June 1511, Ferdinand declared war on the Caribs, others were assimilated during the colonial period, a few retained areas such as in Dominica. Small populations survive, specifically in the Carib Territory in northeast Dominica, the so-called Black Caribs of St. They intermarried with the Carib and formed the last native culture to resist the British and it was not until 1795 that British colonists transported the so-called Black Caribs to Roatan Island, off Honduras. Their descendants continue to live today and are known as the Garifuna ethnic group. Carib resistance delayed the settlement of Dominica by Europeans, the so-called Black Carib communities that remained in St. Vincent and Dominica retained a degree of autonomy well into the 19th century. The last known speakers of Island Carib died in the 1930s, the Kalinago of Dominica maintained their independence for many years by taking advantage of the islands rugged terrain. The islands east coast includes a 3, 700-acre territory formerly known as the Carib Territory that was granted to the people by the British Crown in 1903, there are only 3,000 Caribs remaining
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History of Martinique
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This is a page on the history of the island of Martinique. The island was inhabited by Arawak and Carib peoples. Circa 130 CE, the first Arawaks are believed to have arrived from South America, in 295 CE, an eruption of Mount Pelée resulted in the decimation of the islands population. Around 400 CE, the Arawaks returned and repopulated the island, around 600 CE, the Caribs arrived. They exterminated the Arawaks and proceeded to settle on the island over the few centuries. However, the Spaniards ignored the island as parts of the New World were of greater interest to them. In 1635, Cardinal Richelieu created the Compagnie des Îles de lAmérique, the company contracted with Messrs lOlive and Duplessis to occupy and govern on its behalf the Caribbean islands belonging to the French crown. This led on September 1,1635, to Pierre Bélain dEsnambuc landing on Martinique with eighty to one hundred French settlers from Saint Cristophe and they met some resistance that they were able to dispatch quickly because of their far superior weaponry and armor. They settled in the region that later became known as St. Pierre at the mouth of the Roxelane River. The following year, dEsnambuc fell ill and passed the command of the settlement to his nephew, at this time the colonys population numbered some 700 men. The settlers cleared the land around St. Pierre to grow crops and they grew manioc and potatoes to live on and rocou, indigo, tobacco, and later cacao and cotton, for export. French and foreign merchants frequently came to the island to buy these exotic products, the colonists also established another fort, Fort Saint Louis in 1638. This fort, like Fort Saint Pierre, was more than a wooden stockade. In 1640, the fort was improved to include a ditch, over the next quarter of a century the French established full control of the island. They systematically killed the fiercely resisting Caribs as they expanded, forcing the back to the Caravelle Peninsula in the Cabesterre. Although labor-intensive, sugar was a product to trade. Ever since, a theme of Martiniquan culture has been creolization or interaction between the French colonial settlers, known locally as békés, and the Africans they imported. For over two hundred years, slavery, and slave revolts, would be an influence on the economy
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Saint-Pierre, Martinique
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Saint-Pierre is a town and commune of Frances Caribbean overseas department of Martinique, founded in 1635 by Pierre Belain dEsnambuc. Before the total destruction of Saint-Pierre in 1902 by an eruption, it was the most important city of Martinique culturally and economically. While Fort-de-France was the administrative capital, Saint-Pierre was the cultural capital of Martinique. After the disaster, Fort-de-France grew in economic importance, Saint-Pierre was founded in 1635 by Pierre Belain dEsnambuc, a French trader and adventurer, as the first permanent French colony on the island of Martinique. The Great Hurricane of 1780 produced a storm-surge of 8 metres which inundated the city, destroying all houses, the town was destroyed again in 1902. Legend has it that the towns doom was forecast by loud groaning noises from within the volcano and this story appears to have originated with one of the islands newspapers, published by a political opponent of the governor. The city of Saint-Pierre was never restored to its former entirety, today, the town is the district capital of the Caribbean North district of Martinique. It has been designated as a City of Art and History, there are many historic remains, and a Volcanological Museum
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Arawak
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The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of South America, Florida, and historically of the Caribbean. The term Arawak originally applied specifically to the South American group who self-identified as Arawak and their language, the Arawak language, gives its name to the Arawakan language family. Arawakan speakers in the Caribbean were also known as the Taíno. In 1871, ethnologist Daniel Garrison Brinton proposed calling the Caribbean populace Island Arawak due to their cultural, subsequent scholars shortened this convention to Arawak, creating confusion between the island and mainland groups. In the 20th century, scholars such as Irving Rouse resumed using Taíno for the Caribbean group to emphasize their distinct culture, the Arawakan languages may have emerged in the Orinoco River valley. The group that self-identified as the Arawak, also known as the Lokono, settled the areas of what is now Guyana, Suriname, Grenada and parts of the island of Trinidad. At some point, the Arawakan-speaking Taíno culture emerged in the Caribbean, however, contact with Europeans exposed the Taino to diseases, particularly smallpox, influenza, measles, and typhus, that they no prior contact with, and thus no natural immunity. By 1504, the Spanish had overthrown the last of the Taino cacique chiefdoms on Hispaniola, and firmly established the supreme authority of the Spanish colonists over the now-subjugated Taino. The population of Hispanoila at the point of first European contact is estimated at several hundred thousand, to over a million people, but by 1514, it had dropped to a mere 35,000. By 1509, the Spanish had successfully conquered Puerto Rico and subjugated the ~30,000 Taino inhabitants, by 1530 there were 1148 Taino left alive in Puerto Rico. Taíno influence has survived even today, though, as can be seen in the religions, languages. The Lokono and other South American groups resisted colonization for a period. In the early 17th century, they allied with the Spanish against the neighboring Kalina and their population declined until the 20th century, when it began to increase again. The Spaniards who arrived in the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola in 1492, the explorers mated with the Taíno women, who bore mestizo children as a result. While the Taíno have been extinct as a distinct population since the 16th century, a 2003 mitochondrial DNA study under the Taíno genome project determined that 62% of people in Puerto Rico have direct-line maternal ancestry to Taíno/Arawakan ancestors. There are about 10,000 Lokono living primarily in the areas of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. Unlike many indigenous groups in South America, the Lokono population is growing, john P. Bennett -, first Amerindian ordained as an Anglican priest in Guyana, linguist and author of An Arawak-English Dictionary. George Simon -, artist and archaeologist from Guyana, st. Lucia, Archaeological and Historical Society
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Common Era
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Common Era or Current Era is a year-numbering system for the Julian and Gregorian calendars that refers to the years since the start of this era, i. e. since AD1. The preceding era is referred to as before the Common or Current Era, the Current Era notation system can be used as a secular alternative to the Dionysian era system, which distinguishes eras as AD and BC. The two notation systems are equivalent, thus 2017 CE corresponds to AD2017 and 400 BCE corresponds to 400 BC. The year-numbering system for the Gregorian calendar is the most widespread civil calendar used in the world today. For decades, it has been the standard, recognized by international institutions such as the United Nations. The expression has been traced back to Latin usage to 1615, as vulgaris aerae, the term Common Era can be found in English as early as 1708, and became more widely used in the mid-19th century by Jewish academics. He attempted to number years from a reference date, an event he referred to as the Incarnation of Jesus. Dionysius labeled the column of the table in which he introduced the new era as Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, numbering years in this manner became more widespread in Europe with its usage by Bede in England in 731. Bede also introduced the practice of dating years before what he supposed was the year of birth of Jesus, in 1422, Portugal became the last Western European country to switch to the system begun by Dionysius. The first use of the Latin term vulgaris aerae discovered so far was in a 1615 book by Johannes Kepler, Kepler uses it again in a 1616 table of ephemerides, and again in 1617. A1635 English edition of that book has the title page in English – so far, a 1701 book edited by John LeClerc includes Before Christ according to the Vulgar Æra,6. A1716 book in English by Dean Humphrey Prideaux says, before the beginning of the vulgar æra, a 1796 book uses the term vulgar era of the nativity. The first so-far-discovered usage of Christian Era is as the Latin phrase aerae christianae on the page of a 1584 theology book. In 1649, the Latin phrase æræ Christianæ appeared in the title of an English almanac, a 1652 ephemeris is the first instance so-far-found for English usage of Christian Era. The English phrase common Era appears at least as early as 1708, a 1759 history book uses common æra in a generic sense, to refer to the common era of the Jews. The first-so-far found usage of the phrase before the era is in a 1770 work that also uses common era and vulgar era as synonyms. The 1797 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica uses the terms vulgar era, the Catholic Encyclopedia in at least one article reports all three terms being commonly understood by the early 20th century. Thus, the era of the Jews, the common era of the Mahometans, common era of the world
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Saint Kitts
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Saint Kitts, also known more formally as Saint Christopher Island, is an island in the West Indies. The west side of the borders the Caribbean Sea. Saint Kitts and the island of Nevis constitute one country. Saint Kitts and Nevis are separated by a shallow 3-kilometre channel known as The Narrows, the island is one of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles. It is situated about 2,100 km southeast of Miami, the land area of St. Kitts is about 168 km2, being approximately 29 km long and on average about 8 km across. Saint Kitts has a population of around 35,000, the majority of whom are mainly of African descent, the primary language is English, with a literacy rate of approximately 98%. Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the largest fortress ever built in the Eastern Caribbean, the island of Saint Kitts is home to the Warner Park Cricket Stadium, which was used to host 2007 Cricket World Cup matches. This made St. Kitts and Nevis the smallest nation to ever host a World Cup event, the capital of the two-island nation, and also its largest port, is the town of Basseterre on Saint Kitts. There is a facility for handling large cruise ships there. A ring road goes around the perimeter of the island with smaller roads branching off it, Saint Kitts is 10 km away from Sint Eustatius to the north and 3 km from Nevis to the south. St. Kitts has three groups of volcanic peaks, the North West or Mount Misery Range, the Middle or Verchilds Range. The highest peak is Mount Liamuiga, formerly Mount Misery, a dormant volcano 1,156 m high. There are nine parishes on the island of St. Kitts & Nevis uses the Eastern Caribbean dollar, the US dollar is almost as widely accepted as the Eastern Caribbean dollar. For hundreds of years, St. Kitts operated as a monoculture, but due to decreasing profitability. Tourism is a major and growing source of income to the island, although the number, transportation, non-sugar agriculture, manufacturing and construction are the other growing sectors of the economy. St. Kitts is dependent on tourism to drive its economy, tourism has been increasing since 1978. In 2009, there were 587,479 arrivals to Saint Kitts compared to 379,473 in 2007, as tourism grows, the demand for vacation property increases in conjunction. St. Kitts & Nevis also acquires foreign direct investment from their citizenship by investment program
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St. Pierre, Martinique
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Saint-Pierre is a town and commune of Frances Caribbean overseas department of Martinique, founded in 1635 by Pierre Belain dEsnambuc. Before the total destruction of Saint-Pierre in 1902 by an eruption, it was the most important city of Martinique culturally and economically. While Fort-de-France was the administrative capital, Saint-Pierre was the cultural capital of Martinique. After the disaster, Fort-de-France grew in economic importance, Saint-Pierre was founded in 1635 by Pierre Belain dEsnambuc, a French trader and adventurer, as the first permanent French colony on the island of Martinique. The Great Hurricane of 1780 produced a storm-surge of 8 metres which inundated the city, destroying all houses, the town was destroyed again in 1902. Legend has it that the towns doom was forecast by loud groaning noises from within the volcano and this story appears to have originated with one of the islands newspapers, published by a political opponent of the governor. The city of Saint-Pierre was never restored to its former entirety, today, the town is the district capital of the Caribbean North district of Martinique. It has been designated as a City of Art and History, there are many historic remains, and a Volcanological Museum
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Wikimedia Atlas of Martinique
Martinique travel guide from Wikivoyage
