Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Saint Pierre and Miquelon the Overseas Collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, is a self-governing territorial overseas collectivity of France, situated in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean near the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the only part of New France that remains under French control, with an area of 242 square kilometres and a population of 6,080 at the January 2011 census; the islands are situated at the entrance of Fortune Bay, which extends into the southwestern coast of Newfoundland, near the Grand Banks. They are 3,819 kilometres from Brest, the nearest point in Metropolitan France, 25 kilometres from the Burin Peninsula of Newfoundland. Saint-Pierre is French for the patron saint of fishermen; the present name of Miquelon was first noted in the form of Micquelle in the Basque sailor Martin de Hoyarçabal's navigational pilot for Newfoundland. It has been claimed. Therefore, from Mikelon it may have been written in the French way with a q instead of a k. Though the Basque Country is divided between Spain and France, most Basques live on the south side of the border and speak Spanish, Miquelon may have been influenced by the Spanish name Miguelón, an augmentative form of Miguel meaning "big Michael".
The adjoined island's name of "Langlade" is said to be an adaptation of l'île à l'Anglais. Portuguese João Álvares Fagundes landed on the islands on 21 October 1520 and named the St. Pierre island group the'Eleven Thousand Virgins', as the day marked the feast day of St. Ursula and her virgin companions, they were made a French possession in 1536 by Jacques Cartier on behalf of the King of France. Though frequented by Mi'kmaq people and Basque and Breton fishermen, the islands were not permanently settled until the end of the 17th century: four permanent inhabitants were counted in 1670, 22 in 1691. In 1670, during Jean Talon's tenure as Intendant of New France, a French officer annexed the islands when he found a dozen French fishermen camped there; the British Royal Navy soon began pillaging their camps and ships. By the early 1700s, the islands were again uninhabited, were ceded to the British by the Treaty of Utrecht which ended the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which put an end to the Seven Years' War, France ceded all its North American possessions, but Saint-Pierre and Miquelon were returned to France.
France maintained fishing rights on the coasts of Newfoundland. With France being allied with the Americans during the American Revolutionary War, Britain invaded and razed the colony in 1778, sending the entire population of 2,000 back to France. In 1793, the British landed in Saint-Pierre and, the following year, expelled the French population, tried to install British settlers; the British colony was in turn sacked by French troops in 1796. The Treaty of Amiens of 1802 returned the islands to France, but Britain reoccupied them when hostilities recommenced the next year; the Treaty of Paris gave them back to France, though Britain occupied them yet again during the Hundred Days War. France reclaimed the uninhabited islands in which all structures and buildings had been destroyed or fallen into disrepair; the islands were resettled in 1816. The settlers were Basques and Normans, who were joined by various other elements from the nearby island of Newfoundland. Only around the middle of the century did increased fishing bring a certain prosperity to the little colony.
During the early 1910s, the colony suffered as a result of unprofitable fisheries, large numbers of its people emigrated to Nova Scotia and Quebec. The draft imposed on all male inhabitants of conscript age after the beginning of World War I crippled the fisheries, which could not be processed by the older people and the women and children. About 400 men from the colony served in the French military during World War I, 25% of whom died; the increase in the adoption of steam trawlers in the fisheries contributed to the reduction in employment opportunities. Smuggling had always been an important economic activity in the islands, but it became prominent in the 1920s with the institution of prohibition in the United States. In 1931, the archipelago was reported to have imported 1,815,271 US gallons of whisky from Canada in 12 months, most of it to be smuggled into the United States; the end of prohibition in 1933 plunged the islands into economic depression. During World War II, despite opposition from Canada and the United States, Charles de Gaulle seized the archipelago from Vichy France, to which the local government had pledged its allegiance.
In a referendum the following day, the population endorsed the takeover by Free France. After the 1958 French constitutional referendum, Saint Pierre and Miquelon was given the option of becoming integrated with France, becoming a self-governing state within the French Community, or preserving the status of overseas territory. Since March 2003, Saint Pierre and Miquelon has been an overseas collectivity with a special status; the archipelago became an overseas territory in 1946 an overseas department in 1976, before acquiring the status of territorial collectivity in 1985. The archipelago has two communes: Miquelon-Langlade. A third commune, Isle-aux-Marins, existed until 1945, when it was absorbed by the municipality of Saint-Pierre; the in
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Kitts and Nevis known as the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis, is an island country in the West Indies. Located in the Leeward Islands chain of the Lesser Antilles, it is the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere, in both area and population; the country is a Commonwealth realm, with Elizabeth II as head of state. The capital city is Basseterre on the larger island of Saint Kitts; the smaller island of Nevis lies 3 km southeast of Saint Kitts across a shallow channel called "The Narrows". The British dependency of Anguilla was also a part of this union, known collectively as Saint Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla. To the north-northwest lie the islands of Sint Eustatius, Saba, Saint Barthélemy, Saint-Martin/Sint Maarten and Anguilla. To the east and northeast are Antigua and Barbuda, to the southeast is the small uninhabited island of Redonda, the island of Montserrat, which has an active volcano. Saint Kitts and Nevis were among the first islands in the Caribbean to be settled by Europeans.
Saint Kitts was home to the first British and French colonies in the Caribbean, thus has been titled "The Mother Colony of the West Indies". Saint Kitts was named "Liamuiga", which translates as "fertile land", by the Kalinago who inhabited the island; the name is preserved via Mount Liamuiga. Nevis's pre-Columbian name was "Oualie", meaning "land of beautiful waters". Christopher Columbus upon sighting what is now Nevis in 1493 gave that island the name San Martín; the current name "Nevis" is derived from a Spanish name Nuestra Señora de las Nieves. This Spanish name means Our Lady of the Snows, it is not known who chose this name for the island, but it is a reference to the story of a fourth-century Catholic miracle: a summertime snowfall on the Esquiline Hill in Rome. The white clouds which wreathe the top of Nevis Peak reminded someone of the story of a miraculous snowfall in a hot climate; the island of Nevis upon first British settlement was referred to as "Dulcina", a name meaning "sweet one" in Spanish.
The original Spanish name was restored and used in the shortened form, "Nevis". There is some disagreement over the name. For many years it was thought that he named the island San Cristóbal, after Saint Christopher, his patron saint and the patron hallow of travellers. New studies suggest; the name "San Cristóbal" was given by Columbus to the island now known as Saba, 20 mi northwest. It seems that "San Cristóbal" came to be applied to the island of St. Kitts only as the result of a mapping error. No matter the origin of the name, the island was well documented as "San Cristóbal" by the 17th century; the first English colonists kept the English translation of this name, dubbed it "St. Christopher's Island". In the 17th century, a common nickname for Christopher was Kitt; this is why the island was informally referred to as "Saint Kitt's Island", further shortened to "Saint Kitts". Today the Constitution refers to the state as both "Saint Kitts and Nevis" and "Saint Christopher and Nevis", but the former is the one most used.
The name of the first inhabitants, pre-Arawakan peoples who settled the islands as early as 3000 years ago, is not known. They were followed by the Arawak peoples, or Taíno about 1000 BC. Peak native populations occurred between 500 and 600 AD; the warlike Island Caribs invaded about 800 AD. They had expanded north of St. Kitts by the time of the Spanish conquest. In 1623, the island was settled by the English, soon followed by the French; the Spanish were superior to the Kalinagos in terms of warfare, the French and English were more "economically aggressive and militarily determined" than the Spanish. The French and English, intent on self-enrichment through exploitation of the island's natural resources, understood from the start that their establishment of settlements in St. Kitts would be met with resistance, such resistance was waged by the Kalinago throughout the first three years of the settlements' existence. Throughout the process of establishing settlements on St. Kitts, as elsewhere in the Caribbean, the French and the English, like their predecessors, were intent on enslaving, expelling or exterminating the Kalinagos, since the latter's retention of land threatened the profitability of the European-controlled plantation economy.
To facilitate this objective, an ideological campaign was waged by colonial chroniclers, dating back to the Spanish, as they produced literature which systematically denied Kalinago humanity. In 1626, the Anglo-French settlers joined forces to massacre the Kalinago to pre-empt an imminent plan by the Caribs, conniving with the Kalinagos, to expel or kill. A Spanish expedition sent to enforce Spanish claims destroyed the English and French colonies and deported the settlers back to their respective countries in 1629; as part of the war settlement in 1630, the Spanish permitted the re-establishment of the English and French colonies. As Spanish power went into decline, Saint Kitts became the premier base for English and French expansion into the Caribbean. From St. Kitts, the British settled the islands of Antigua, Montserrat and Tortola, the French settled Martinique, the Guadeloupe archipelago and St. Barts. During the late-seventeenth century, Fra
Basse-Terre
Basse-Terre is a French commune in the Guadaloupe department of France in the Lesser Antilles. It is the prefecture of Guadeloupe; the city of Basse-Terre is located on the western half of Guadeloupe. Although it is the administrative capital, Basse-Terre is only the second largest city in Guadeloupe behind Pointe-à-Pitre. Together with its urban area it had 44,864 inhabitants in 2012. Basse-Terre is located in the south-western corner of the Basse-Terre portion of the island of Guadeloupe, itself located some 100 km north of Dominica and some 450 km south-east of Puerto Rico; the commune is at the foot of the Soufrière volcano and is connected to the rest of the island by three main roads: The N1 which exits the commune in the south on the coast and continues inland to Gourbeyre all the way around the coast to Pointe-à-Pitre on Grande-Terre. The N2 which goes north along the coast to Vieux Habitants and continues all the way around the coast to join the N1 at Baie Mahault; the N3 which traverses the length of the commune and continues to Saint-Claude inland.
Basse-Terre has a maritime station that receives cruise ships and has a ferry service to the Îles des Saintes. The commune is urban with some farmland in the north-east and north-west; the different districts of Basse-Terre are: Agincourt, Bas-du-Bourg, Desmarais Guillaud, Morne-Chaulet, Morne-à-Vaches, Petit-Paris, Rivière-des-Peres, La Rue-Maillan, Saint-François, Sur-le Morne, Versailles. Basse-Terre lies at a transitional point between a tropical rainforest climate and a tropical monsoon climate. While Basse-Terre does feature a drier stretch from January through March, the town does not quite have a dry season month; the town’s driest month sees on average 60 mm of precipitation. A monthly precipitation average below 60 mm is considered dry season month; as is the norm with cities with these two climate types, Basse-Terre features consistent temperatures throughout the year. The name comes from the mariners' vocabulary of the 17th century which designated a land or coast sheltered from the wind, as opposed to Capesterre "Cape to the east of Land".
Before Basse-Terre became a French town it was a village of American Indian horticulturists and potters. The village was on the site of the present Basse-Terre Cathedral where archaeological excavations found human remains and other evidence of occupation during the restoration of the cathedral. In 2005 on the lower part of a Native American garbage dump, excavations have uncovered a new dump containing large amounts of archaeological material: food waste, stone tools and shell tools, charcoal and a tomb. In 1635, when it was part of Saint Kitts and Nevis, an expedition was seeking a place of lasting presence in Guadeloupe; the operation was entrusted to Charles Liénard de l'Olive and Jean du Plessis d'Ossonville together with 4 missionaries and 550 colonists. The landing took place on 28 June 1635, at Pointe Allègre, far from Basse-Terre. Famine pushed the party to the south near the present town of Vieux-Fort in early 1636; the relationship between Native Americans and colonists degraded quickly.
In 1660 a treaty forced him to retreat to Saint Vincent. The war forced him to build today Fort Olive at Vieux Fort. In 1640 Aubert succeeded Liénard as the government of the island and he soon left the site to settle on the left bank of the Galion, the current Gourbeyre marina. In 1643 Charles Houël du Petit Pré replaced Aubert and, in 1649, he left the marina site for the right bank of the Galion and built a fort; some religious built the first church, now the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, shortly afterwards and the city was organized around the chapel and from the fort to the river of Herbs. This was the beginning of Basse-Terre. Around 1680 on the right bank of the river of Herbs the Capuchins built a chapel dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi where the present Guadaloupe Cathedral is located and a second centre of population grew around this place of worship; the River of Herbs separated the two distinct villages: Basse-Terre and Saint Francis. In reality, people flocked to the new town because of attacks by the English who burned the town of Basse-Terre in 1691 and again in 1703.
Following these raids the people thought that the fort was attracting the invaders and moved to Saint Francis. A stone bridge was built in 1739 replacing a wooden bridge across the river of Herbs. On 23 January 1759 the island was taken over by the British; the island was occupied by the British until 10 February 1763. The colony was experiencing a resurgence of activity despite the founding of Pointe-à-Pitre in 1764 - a town in a better position for the ocean swell - and despite a fire in September 1782; the town was redesigned around 1787. The French Revolution reached the island and therefore Basse-Terre in September 1789; the English passed the town to Governor Collot and Victor Hugues on 22 April 1789. Colot and Hugues were sent by the National Convention in Paris to take the colony in hand and abolish slavery, they installed a guillotine. The city was the scene of military operations conducted by General Richepanse, sent by Napoleon to reestablish slavery, against Louis Delgrès in 1802. Delgrès abandoned it on 22 May.
The town was occupied from 6 February 1810 to 30 May 1814 and again from 10 August 1815 to July 1816. For over 20 years Basse-Terre suffered from the effects of these disturbanc
Miquelon Island
Miquelon known as Grande Miquelon, is one of the islands of the archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, an Overseas collectivity of France located in the Atlantic Ocean, 22 kilometres south of the coast of Newfoundland. Miquelon is situated between Le Cap Island to Langlade Island to the south; the name Miquelon purportedly derived from a Basque nickname for "Michael". In 1579, the names Micquetõ and Micquelle appeared for the first time in French Basque mariner Martin de Hoyarçabal's maritime pilot; the name evolved over time into Miclon and Miquelon. Miquelon's coastline includes numerous sand and pebbles beaches enclosing lagoons, as well as high rocky cliffs standing up to 25 metres on the east coast, its geology consists of metamorphosed post-Ordovician volcanic rocks rhyolites with breccias and basalts. On the south of the Miquelon Island is a large lagoon known as the Grand Barachois, host to a large population of seals and other wildlife. Miquelon is a well known destination for bird watching.
Miquelon is connected to Le Cap by a tombolo 3 kilometres long and in places less than 100 metres wide. To the south, Miquelon is connected to Langlade Island by a sandy isthmus that formed in the 18th century, 12 kilometres in length from 100 metres to 6 metres wide; the island of Saint Pierre Island is across a treacherous and foggy 6 kilometres strait that fishermen named "The Mouth of Hell", the site of more than 600 shipwrecks. The climate is typical of the North Atlantic and the Labrador Current, with frequent storms and winds that exceed 60 kilometres per hour for nearly six months of the year; the summers are foggy. The average annual temperature is 5.5 °C. Miquelon includes the commune of Miquelon-Langlade, with a population of 626 in 2012. Miquelon Airport serves the population via turboprop or small jet aircraft; the majority of the residents live in the town called Miquelon, located in the north of the island near La Cap. The residents are citizens of France. History of Saint Pierre and Miquelon List of islands of France List of islands in the Atlantic Ocean Official website
Zazpiak Bat
Zazpiak Bat is a heraldic nickname for the Basque coat of arms which includes the arms of the seven provinces mentioned, stressing their unity. It was designed by the historian Jean de Jaurgain in 1897 for the Congrès et Fêtes de la Tradition basque celebrated at Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Zazpiak Bat is a motto attributed to Basque explorer Antoine-Thomson d'Abbadie in the late nineteenth century, from the Basque words zazpiak meaning'the seven' and bat meaning'one', translates as "the seven one" and refers to the seven Basque Country traditional provinces. However, it was first cited in 1836 by a friend and collaborator of Antoine d'Abbadie's, the Souletin Agosti Xaho; the motto is based on a similar one fashioned by the Enlightenment society Real Sociedad Bascongada de Amigos del País in 1765, Irurac bat,'the three one', after the provinces making up the Basque Autonomous Community), while a like variant was created too in the 19th century known as Laurak bat, a motto quoted and celebrated by the Provincial Government of Navarre in 1866.
The original Zazpiak Bat features a design of traditional arms of six Basque territories, namely Álava and Biscay plus Navarre. The coat of arms of the third traditional province, Lower Navarre is subsumed under the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Navarre, therefore omitted and represented by the latter; the modern design is based on the current simplified heraldry of these territories. Laurak Bat with the four Basque provinces in Spain was adopted as the coat of arms of the Basque autonomous community; the coat of arms of Navarre was included in the fourth quarter of the shield, but following a protest from the UPN led government of Navarre, the Constitutional Court of Spain forced the Basque government to remove the chains of Navarre from the Basque insignia. The red background of the Navarrese insignia occupies the fourth quarter of the coat of arms of the Basque Country. Website with various Basque flags and arms
Karine Claireaux
Karine Claireaux was a member of the Senate of France. She was first elected in 2011, represented Saint Pierre and Miquelon. A customs officer by profession, she was a member of the Socialist Party, before joining the La République En Marche group in 2017, she has been the mayor of Sainte-Pierre, Saint Pierre and Miquelon since 2001. *Page on the French Senate website
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's oceans, with an area of about 106,460,000 square kilometers. It covers 20 percent of the Earth's surface and about 29 percent of its water surface area, it separates the "Old World" from the "New World". The Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Europe and Africa to the east, the Americas to the west; as one component of the interconnected global ocean, it is connected in the north to the Arctic Ocean, to the Pacific Ocean in the southwest, the Indian Ocean in the southeast, the Southern Ocean in the south. The Equatorial Counter Current subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean and the South Atlantic Ocean at about 8°N. Scientific explorations of the Atlantic include the Challenger expedition, the German Meteor expedition, Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the United States Navy Hydrographic Office; the oldest known mentions of an "Atlantic" sea come from Stesichorus around mid-sixth century BC: Atlantikoi pelágei and in The Histories of Herodotus around 450 BC: Atlantis thalassa where the name refers to "the sea beyond the pillars of Heracles", said to be part of the sea that surrounds all land.
Thus, on one hand, the name refers to Atlas, the Titan in Greek mythology, who supported the heavens and who appeared as a frontispiece in Medieval maps and lent his name to modern atlases. On the other hand, to early Greek sailors and in Ancient Greek mythological literature such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, this all-encompassing ocean was instead known as Oceanus, the gigantic river that encircled the world. In contrast, the term "Atlantic" referred to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the sea off the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast; the Greek word thalassa has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of millions of years ago. The term "Aethiopian Ocean", derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the mid-19th century. During the Age of Discovery, the Atlantic was known to English cartographers as the Great Western Ocean; the term The Pond is used by British and American speakers in context to the Atlantic Ocean, as a form of meiosis, or sarcastic understatement.
The term dates to as early as 1640, first appearing in print in pamphlet released during the reign of Charles I, reproduced in 1869 in Nehemiah Wallington's Historical Notices of Events Occurring Chiefly in The Reign of Charles I, where "great Pond" is used in reference to the Atlantic Ocean by Francis Windebank, Charles I's Secretary of State. The International Hydrographic Organization defined the limits of the oceans and seas in 1953, but some of these definitions have been revised since and some are not used by various authorities and countries, see for example the CIA World Factbook. Correspondingly, the extent and number of oceans and seas varies; the Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by South America. It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea. To the east, the boundaries of the ocean proper are Europe: the Strait of Africa. In the southeast, the Atlantic merges into the Indian Ocean; the 20° East meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas to Antarctica defines its border.
In the 1953 definition it extends south to Antarctica, while in maps it is bounded at the 60° parallel by the Southern Ocean. The Atlantic has irregular coasts indented by numerous bays and seas; these include the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Caribbean Sea, Davis Strait, Denmark Strait, part of the Drake Passage, Gulf of Mexico, Labrador Sea, Mediterranean Sea, North Sea, Norwegian Sea all of the Scotia Sea, other tributary water bodies. Including these marginal seas the coast line of the Atlantic measures 111,866 km compared to 135,663 km for the Pacific. Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of 106,460,000 km2 or 23.5% of the global ocean and has a volume of 310,410,900 km3 or 23.3% of the total volume of the earth's oceans. Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers 81,760,000 km2 and has a volume of 305,811,900 km3; the North Atlantic covers 41,490,000 km2 and the South Atlantic 40,270,000 km2. The average depth is 3,646 m and the maximum depth, the Milwaukee Deep in the Puerto Rico Trench, is 8,486 m.
The bathymetry of the Atlantic is dominated by a submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It runs from 87°N or 300 km south of the North Pole to the subantarctic Bouvet Island at 42°S; the MAR divides the Atlantic longitudinally into two halves, in each of which a series of basins are delimited by secondary, transverse ridges. The MAR reaches above 2,000 m along most of its length, but is interrupted by larger transform faults at two places: the Romanche Trench near the Equator and the Gibbs Fracture Zone at 53°N; the MAR is a barrier for bottom water, but at these two transform faults deep water currents can pass from one side to the othe
Port-en-Bessin-Huppain (France), since 1976.[12]
