French Guiana
French Guiana is an overseas department and region of France, on the north Atlantic coast of South America in the Guyanas. It borders Brazil to the east and Suriname to the west. Since 1981, when Belize became independent, French Guiana has been the only territory of the mainland Americas, still part of a European country. With a land area of 83,534 km2, French Guiana is the second-largest region of France and the largest outermost region within the European Union, it has a low population density, with only 3.6 inhabitants per square kilometre. Half of its 296,711 inhabitants in 2019 lived in the metropolitan area of its capital. 98.9% of the land territory of French Guiana is covered by forests, a large part of, primeval rainforest. The Guiana Amazonian Park, the largest national park in the European Union, covers 41% of French Guiana's territory. Since December 2015 both the region and the department have been ruled by a single assembly within the framework of a new territorial collectivity, the French Guiana Territorial Collectivity.
This assembly, the French Guiana Assembly, has replaced the former regional council and departmental council, which were both disbanded. The French Guiana Assembly is in charge of departmental government, its president is Rodolphe Alexandre. Before European contact, the territory was inhabited by Native Americans, most speaking the Arawak language, of the Arawakan language family; the people identified as Lokono. The first French establishment is recorded in 1503, but France did not establish a durable presence until colonists founded Cayenne in 1643. Guiana was developed as a slave society, where planters imported Africans as enslaved laborers on large sugar and other plantations in such number as to increase the population. Slavery was abolished in the colonies at the time of the French Revolution. Guiana was designated as a French department in 1797. But, after France gave up its territory in North America in 1803, it developed Guiana as a penal colony, establishing a network of camps and penitentiaries along the coast where prisoners from metropolitan France were sentenced to forced labor.
During World War II and the fall of France to German forces, Félix Éboué was one of the first to support General Charles de Gaulle of Free France, as early as June 18, 1940. Guiana rallied Free France in 1943, it abandoned its status as a colony and once again became a French department in 1946. After De Gaulle was elected as president of France, he established the Guiana Space Centre in 1965, it is now operated by Arianespace and the European Space Agency. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, several hundred Hmong refugees from Laos immigrated to French Guiana, fleeing displacement after United States involvement in the Vietnam War. In the late 1980s, more than 10,000 Surinamese refugees Maroons, arrived in French Guiana, fleeing the Surinamese Civil War. More French Guiana has received large numbers of Brazilian and Haitian economic migrants. Illegal and ecologically destructive gold mining by Brazilian garimpeiros is a chronic issue in the remote interior rain forest of French Guiana. Integrated in the French central state in the 21st century, Guiana is a part of the European Union, its official currency is the euro.
The region has the highest nominal GDP per capita in South America. A large part of Guiana's economy derives from jobs and businesses associated with the presence of the Guiana Space Centre, now the European Space Agency's primary launch site near the equator; as elsewhere in France, the official language is standard French, but each ethnic community has its own language, of which French Guianese Creole, a French-based creole language, is the most spoken. The region still faces such problems as poor infrastructure, high costs of living, high levels of crime and common social unrest. Guiana is derived from an Amerindian language and means "land of many waters"; the addition of the adjective "French" in most languages other than French is rooted in colonial times, when five such colonies had been named along the coast, subject to differing powers. French Guiana and the two larger countries to the north and west and Suriname, are still collectively referred to as "the Guianas" and constitute one large landmass known as the Guiana Shield.
French Guiana was inhabited by indigenous people: Kalina, Emerillon, Palikur and Wayana. The French attempted to create a colony there in the 18th century in conjunction with its settlement of some Caribbean islands, such as Guadeloupe and Saint-Domingue. Bill Marshall, Professor of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Stirling wrote of French Guiana's origins: The first French effort to colonize Guiana, in 1763, failed utterly, as settlers were subject to high mortality given the numerous tropical diseases and harsh climate: all but 2,000 of the initial 12,000 settlers died. During operations as a penal colony beginning in the mid-19th century, France transported 56,000 prisoners to Devil's Island. Fewer than 10% survived their sentence. Île du Diable was the site of a small prison facility, part of a larger penal system by the same name, which consisted of prisons on
Administrative divisions of France
The administrative divisions of France are concerned with the institutional and territorial organization of French territory. These territories are located in many parts of the world. There are many administrative divisions, which may have political, electoral, or administrative objectives. All the inhabited territories are represented in the National Assembly and Economic and Social Council and their citizens have French citizenship; the French republic is divided into 18 regions: 12 in 6 elsewhere. They are traditionally divided between the Metropolitan regions, located on the European continent, the Overseas regions, located outside the European continent. Both form the most integrated part of the French Republic; as of 1 January 2016, metropolitan France is divided into the following: 13 regions, including Corsica. The regions are subdivided into 96 departments; the departments are subdivided into 322 arrondissements. The arrondissements are subdivided into 1,995 cantons; the cantons are subdivided into 36,529 communes.
Three urban communes are further divided into municipal arrondissements. There are 20 arrondissements of Paris, 16 arrondissements of Marseille, 9 arrondissements of Lyon; the city of Marseille is divided into 8 municipal sectors. Each sector is composed of two arrondissements. There are 710 associated communes independent communes which were merged with larger communes but have retained some limited degree of autonomy. Furthermore, as of January 2009, there exist 2,585 intercommunal structures grouping 34,077 communes, with 87.4% of the population of metropolitan France living in them. These intercommunal structures are: 16 Urban communities 167 Agglomeration communities 2,397 Commune communities 5 Syndicates of New Agglomeration, a category being phased out Five Overseas Regions, which have the same status as metropolitan regions; the Overseas Regions are following: Martinique Guadeloupe French Guiana Réunion MayotteEach overseas region is coextensive with an overseas department, again with the same status as departments in metropolitan France.
The first four overseas departments were created in 1946 and preceded the four overseas regions, Mayotte became a DOM in 2011. The dual structure overseas region/overseas department, with two separate assemblies administering the same territory, results from the extension of the regional scheme to the overseas departments in the 1970s; each overseas region/department may transform into a single structure, with the merger of the regional and departmental assemblies, but voters in Martinique and Guadeloupe rejected this in two referendums in 2003. In Réunion the creation of a second department for the southern part of the island has been debated for some time; the overseas departments are subdivided into 12 arrondissements. The 12 arrondissements are further subdivided into 153 cantons with Mayotte having another 19 cantons The 172 cantons are composed of 129 communes. Furthermore, as of 1 January 2009, there exist 16 intercommunal structures in the overseas departments, grouping 89 communes, with 83.2% of the population of the overseas departments living in them intercommunal structures.
These intercommunal structures are: 7 Agglomeration communities 9 Commune communities The French Republic includes five overseas collectivities with a semi-autonomous status: Saint-Martin Saint-Barthélemy Saint-Pierre and Miquelon French Polynesia Wallis and FutunaSaint-Martin is a new overseas collectivity created on 22 February 2007. It was previously a commune inside the Guadeloupe department; the commune structure was abolished and Saint-Martin is now one of only three permanently inhabited territories of the French Republic with no commune structure. There are no cantons or arrondissements. Saint-Barthélemy is a new overseas collectivity created on 22 February 2007, it was a commune inside the Guadeloupe department. The commune structure was abolished and Saint-Barthélemy is now one of only three permanently inhabited territories of the French Republic with no commune structure. There are no arrondissements either. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon is divided into 2 communes with no cantons. French Polynesia (designate
British Overseas Territories
The British Overseas Territories or United Kingdom Overseas Territories are 14 territories under the jurisdiction and sovereignty of the United Kingdom. They are remnants of the British Empire that have not been granted independence or have voted to remain British territories; these territories do not form part of the United Kingdom and, with the exception of Gibraltar, are not part of the European Union. Most of the permanently inhabited territories are internally self-governing, with the UK retaining responsibility for defence and foreign relations. Three are inhabited only by a transitory population of scientific personnel, they all share the British monarch as head of state. As of April 2018 the Minister responsible for the Territories excluding the Falkland Islands and the Sovereign Base Areas on Cyprus, is the Minister of State for the Commonwealth and the UN; the other three territories are the responsibility of the Minister of State for Europe and the Americas. The fourteen British Overseas Territories are: The term "British Overseas Territory" was introduced by the British Overseas Territories Act 2002, replacing the term British Dependent Territory, introduced by the British Nationality Act 1981.
Prior to 1 January 1983, the territories were referred to as British Crown Colonies. Although the Crown dependencies of Jersey and the Isle of Man are under the sovereignty of the British monarch, they are in a different constitutional relationship with the United Kingdom; the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies are themselves distinct from the Commonwealth realms, a group of 16 independent countries each having Elizabeth II as their reigning monarch, from the Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association of 53 countries with historic links to the British Empire. With the exceptions of the British Antarctic Territory and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Territories retain permanent civilian populations. Permanent residency for the 7,000 civilians living in the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia is limited to citizens of the Republic of Cyprus. Collectively, the Territories encompass a population of about 250,000 people and a land area of about 1,727,570 square kilometres.
The vast majority of this land area, 1,700,000 square kilometres, constitutes the uninhabited British Antarctic Territory, while the largest territory by population, accounts for a quarter of the total BOT population. At the other end of the scale, three territories have no civilian population. Pitcairn Islands, settled by the survivors of the Mutiny on the Bounty, is the smallest settled territory with 49 inhabitants, while the smallest by land area is Gibraltar on the southern tip of the Iberian peninsula; the United Kingdom participates in the Antarctic Treaty System and, as part of a mutual agreement, the British Antarctic Territory is recognised by four of the six other sovereign nations making claims to Antarctic territory. Early colonies, in the sense of English subjects residing in lands hitherto outside the control of the English government, were known as "Plantations"; the first, colony was Newfoundland, where English fishermen set up seasonal camps in the 16th century. It is now a province of Canada known as Labrador.
It retains strong cultural ties with Britain. English colonisation of North America began in 1607 with the settlement of Jamestown, the first successful permanent colony in Virginia, its offshoot, was settled inadvertently after the wrecking of the Virginia company's flagship there in 1609, with the Virginia Company's charter extended to include the archipelago in 1612. St. George's town, founded in Bermuda in that year, remains the oldest continuously inhabited British settlement in the New World. Bermuda and Bermudians have played important, sometimes pivotal, but underestimated or unacknowledged roles in the shaping of the English and British trans-Atlantic Empires; these include maritime commerce, settlement of the continent and of the West Indies, the projection of naval power via the colony's privateers, among other areas. The growth of the British Empire in the 19th century, to its territorial peak in the 1920s, saw Britain acquire nearly one quarter of the world's land mass, including territories with large indigenous populations in Asia and Africa.
From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, the larger settler colonies – in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa – first became self-governing colonies and achieved independence in all matters except foreign policy and trade. Separate self-governing colonies federated to become Canada, South Africa, Rhodesia; these and other large self-governing colonies had become known as Dominions by the 1920s. The Dominions achieved full independence with the Statute of Westminster. Through a process of decolonisation following the Second World War, most of the British colonies in Africa and the Caribbean gained independence; some colonies becam
France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, 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 leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Île Amsterdam
Île Amsterdam known as Amsterdam Island, New Amsterdam, or Nouvelle Amsterdam, is an island of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands in the southern Indian Ocean that together with neighbouring Île Saint-Paul 85 km to the south forms one of the five districts of the territory. The research station at Martin-de-Viviès, first called Camp Heurtin and La Roche Godon, is the only settlement on the island and is the seasonal home to about thirty researchers and staff studying biology and geomagnetics; the island is equidistant to the land masses of Madagascar and Antarctica – as well as the British Indian Ocean Territory and the Cocos Islands. The island is named after the ship Nieuw Amsterdam, in turn named after the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam that became New York City in the United States; the island was discovered by the Spanish explorer Juan Sebastián de Elcano on 18 March 1522 during his circumnavigation of the Earth. However, he did not name the island. Having found the island unnamed, Dutch captain Anthonie van Diemen named it Nieuw Amsterdam after his ship on 17 June 1633.
The first recorded landing was made in December 1696 by Dutchman Willem de Vlamingh. French Captain Pierre François Péron claims. Peron's Memoires, in which he describes his experiences, were published in a limited edition, now an expensive collectors' item. There was confusion in the early days between Saint Paul Islands; the first sealers landed in 1789. Between that date and 1876, 47 sealing vessels are recorded at the island. Relics of the sealing era can still be found; the island was a stop on the Macartney Mission during its voyage to China in 1793. On 11 October 1833 the British barque Lady Munro was wrecked at the island. Of the 97 persons aboard, 21 survivors were picked up two weeks by a United States sealing schooner, General Jackson; the islands of Île Amsterdam and Île Saint-Paul were first claimed by Martin Dupeyrat for France in 1843. However, the governor of Réunion refused to ratify the act of possession and France took formal control only in October 1892. In January 1871 an attempt to settle the island was made by a party led by Heurtin, a French resident of Réunion.
After seven months, their attempts to raise cattle and grow crops were fruitless, they returned to Réunion, abandoning the cattle on the island. In May 1880 HMS Raleigh circumnavigated the island searching for a missing ship the Knowsley Hall. A cutter and gig were despatched to the island to search for signs of habitation. There was a flagpole on Hoskin Point and 50–70 yards north were two huts, one of which had an intact roof and contained three bunks, empty casks, an iron pot and the eggshells and feathers of sea-birds. There was an upturned serviceable boat in the other hut, believed to belong to the fishermen who visited the island; the islands were attached to the French colony of Madagascar from 21 November 1924 until 6 August 1955 when the French Southern and Antarctic Lands was formed. The first French base on Amsterdam was established in 1949, was called Camp Heurtin; the Global Atmosphere Watch still maintains a presence on Amsterdam. From 1987–98, there were frequent amateur radio operations from Amsterdam Island.
There was a resident radio amateur operator in the 1950s, using callsign FB8ZZ. In January 2014 Clublog listed St Paul Islands as the seventh most-wanted DXCC entity. On 25 January 2014 a DX-pedition landed on Amsterdam Island using MV Braveheart and began amateur radio operations from two separate locations using callsign FT5ZM; the DX-pedition remained active until 12 February and achieved over 170,000 two-way contacts with amateur radio stations worldwide. The volcanic island is a active volcano which last erupted in 1792, it has an area of 55 km2, measuring about 10 km on its longest side, reaches as high as 867 m at the Mont de la Dives. The high central area of the island, at an elevation of over 500 metres, containing its peaks and caldera, is known as the Plateau des Tourbières; the cliffs that characterise the western coastline of the island, rising to over 700 metres, are known as the Falaises d'Entrecasteaux after the 18th-century French navigator Bruni d'Entrecasteaux. Île Amsterdam has a mild, oceanic climate under the Köppen climate classification, with a mean annual temperature of 14 °C, rainfall of 1,100 mm, persistent westerly winds and high levels of humidity.
Under the Trewartha climate classification the island is well inside the maritime subtropical zone due to its low diurnal temperature variation keeping means high. Phylica arborea trees occur on Amsterdam, the only place where they form a low forest, although the trees are found on Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island, it was called the Grand Bois, which covered the lowlands of the island until forest fires set by sealers cleared much of it in 1825. Only eight fragments remain; some sailors from HMS Raleigh landed on the island on 27 May 1880. They described the vegetation as Rough ground, grass several feet high, myrtle 10–15 feet high in sheltered ravines, sedge and cabbages, grown into bushes with stumps several inches thick in the garden.... The island is home to the endemic Amsterdam albatross, which breeds only on the Plateau des Tourbières. Other rare species are Antarctic tern and western rockhopper penguin; the Amsterdam duck is now extinct, as ar
Communes of France
The commune is a level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are analogous to civil townships and incorporated municipalities in the United States and Canada, Gemeinden in Germany, comuni in Italy or ayuntamiento in Spain; the United Kingdom has no exact equivalent, as communes resemble districts in urban areas, but are closer to parishes in rural areas where districts are much larger. Communes are based on historical geographic communities or villages and are vested with significant powers to manage the populations and land of the geographic area covered; the communes are the fourth-level administrative divisions of France. Communes vary in size and area, from large sprawling cities with millions of inhabitants like Paris, to small hamlets with only a handful of inhabitants. Communes are based on pre-existing villages and facilitate local governance. All communes have names, but not all named geographic areas or groups of people residing together are communes, the difference residing in the lack of administrative powers.
Except for the municipal arrondissements of its largest cities, the communes are the lowest level of administrative division in France and are governed by elected officials with extensive autonomous powers to implement national policy. A commune is city, or other municipality. "Commune" in English has a historical bias, implies an association with socialist political movements or philosophies, collectivist lifestyles, or particular history. There is nothing intrinsically different between commune in French; the French word commune appeared in the 12th century, from Medieval Latin communia, for a large gathering of people sharing a common life. As of January 2015, there were 36,681 communes in France, 36,552 of them in metropolitan France and 129 of them overseas; this is a higher total than that of any other European country, because French communes still reflect the division of France into villages or parishes at the time of the French Revolution. The whole territory of the French Republic is divided into communes.
This is unlike some other countries, such as the United States, where unincorporated areas directly governed by a county or a higher authority can be found. There are only a few exceptions: COM of Saint-Martin, it was a commune inside the Guadeloupe région. The commune structure was abolished when Saint-Martin became an overseas collectivity on 22 February 2007. COM of Wallis and Futuna, which still is divided according to the three traditional chiefdoms. COM of Saint Barthélemy, it was a commune inside the Guadeloupe region. The commune structure was abolished when Saint-Barthélemy became an overseas collectivity on 22 February 2007. Furthermore, two regions without permanent habitation have no communes: TOM of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands Clipperton Island in the Pacific Ocean In metropolitan France, the average area of a commune in 2004 was 14.88 square kilometres. The median area of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was smaller, at 10.73 square kilometres. The median area is a better measure of the area of a typical French commune.
This median area is smaller than that of most European countries. In Italy, the median area of communes is 22 km2. Switzerland and the Länder of Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia in Germany were the only places in Europe where the communes had a smaller median area than in France; the communes of France's overseas départements such as Réunion and French Guiana are large by French standards. They group into the same commune several villages or towns with sizeable distances among them. In Réunion, demographic expansion and sprawling urbanization have resulted in the administrative splitting of some communes; the median population of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was 380 inhabitants. Again this is a small number, here France stands apart in Europe, with the lowest communes' median population of all the European countries; this small median population of French communes can be compared with Italy, where the median population of communes in 2001 was 2,343 inhabitants, Belgium, or Spain.
The median population given here should not hide the fact that there are pronounced differences in size between French communes. As mentioned in the introduction, a commune can be a city of 2 million inhabitants such as Paris, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, or just a hamlet of 10 inhabitants. What the median population tells us is that the vast majority of the French communes only have a few hundred inhabitants. In metropolitan France just over 50 percent of the 36,683 communes have fewer than 500 inhabitants a
Wallis and Futuna
Wallis and Futuna the Territory of the Wallis and Futuna Islands, is a French island collectivity in the South Pacific between Tuvalu to the northwest, Fiji to the southwest, Tonga to the southeast, Samoa to the east, Tokelau to the northeast. Though both French and Polynesian and Futuna is distinct from the entity known as French Polynesia, its land area is 142.42 km2 with a population of 11,558 at the 2018 census. Mata-Utu is biggest city; the territory is made up of three main volcanic tropical islands along with a number of tiny islets, is split into two island groups that lie about 260 km apart, namely the Wallis Islands in the northeast, the Hoorn Islands in the southwest, including Futuna Island proper and the uninhabited Alofi Island. Since 2003, Wallis and Futuna has been a French overseas collectivity. Between 1961 and 2003, it had the status of a French overseas territory, though its official name did not change when the status changed. Polynesians settled the islands that would be called Wallis and Futuna around the year 1000 AD/CE, when the Tongan Empire expanded into the area.
The original inhabitants built forts and other identifiable ruins on the islands, some of which are still intact. Futuna was first put on the European maps by Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire during their circumnavigation of the globe in 1616, they named the islands "Hoornse Eylanden" after the Dutch town of Hoorn. This was translated into French as "Isles de Horne." The French were the first Europeans to settle in the territory, with the arrival of French missionaries in 1837, who converted the population to Roman Catholicism. Pierre Chanel, canonized as a saint in 1954, is a major patron of the island of Futuna and the region; the Wallis Islands are named after the British explorer, Samuel Wallis, who sailed past them in 1767 after discovering Tahiti. On 5 April 1842, the missionaries asked for the protection of France after the rebellion of a part of the local population. On 5 April 1887, the Queen of Uvea signed a treaty establishing a French protectorate; the kings of Sigave and Alo on the islands of Futuna and Alofi signed a treaty establishing a French protectorate on 16 February 1888.
The islands were put under the authority of the French colony of New Caledonia. In 1917, the three traditional kingdoms were annexed to France and turned into the Colony of Wallis and Futuna, still under the authority of the Colony of New Caledonia. During World War II, the islands' administration was pro-Vichy until a Free French corvette from New Caledonia deposed the regime on 26 May 1942. Units of the US Marine Corps landed on Wallis on 29 May 1942. In 1959, the inhabitants of the islands voted to become a French overseas territory, effective in 1961, thus ending their subordination to New Caledonia. In 2005, the 50th King of Uvea, Tomasi Kulimoetoke II, faced being deposed after giving sanctuary to his grandson, convicted of manslaughter; the King claimed. There were riots in the streets involving the King's supporters, who were victorious over attempts to replace the King. Two years Tomasi Kulimoetoke died on 7 May 2007; the state was in a six-month period of mourning. During this period, mentioning a successor was forbidden.
On 25 July 2008, Kapiliele Faupala was installed as King despite protests from some of the royal clans. The territory is divided into three traditional kingdoms: Uvea, on the island of Wallis, Sigave, on the western part of the island of Futuna, Alo, on the eastern part of the island of Futuna and on the uninhabited island of Alofi: referred to the villages with municipal status called MuaThe capital of the collectivity is Matāʻutu on the island of Uvéa, the most populous of the Wallis Islands; as an overseas collectivity of France, it is governed under the French constitution of 28 September 1958, has universal suffrage for those over 18 years of age. The French president is elected by popular vote for a five-year term; the head of state is President Emmanuel Macron of France as represented by the Administrator-Superior Thierry Queffelec. The President of the Territorial Assembly is Petelo Hanisi since 11 December 2013; the Council of the Territory consists of three kings and three members appointed by the high administrator on the advice of the Territorial Assembly.
The legislative branch consists of the unicameral Territorial Assembly or Assemblée territoriale of 20 seats. Wallis and Futuna elect one senator to the French Senate and one deputy to the French National Assembly. Justice is administered under French law by a tribunal of the first instance in Mata-Utu, but the three traditional kingdoms administer justice according to customary law; the Court of Appeal is in New Caledonia. The territory participates in the Franc Zone, as a permanent member of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and as an observer of the Pacific Islands Forum. Wallis and Fut
