Devil's Island

Devil's Island is a small island in French Guiana's Salvation Islands, notorious as part of a French penal colony that operated from 1852 to 1953.

French Guiana: French Guiana is an overseas department of France on the northeastern coast of South America. Its colonial administration established and operated the penal colony.
Île Royale: Île Royale is the largest of the Salvation Islands and housed major administrative and prison facilities. It served as the colony's administrative center, unlike the smaller Devil's Island.
Alfred Dreyfus: Alfred Dreyfus was a French army officer convicted of treason in 1894 and imprisoned on Devil's Island. His confinement made the island internationally known during the Dreyfus Affair.
Dreyfus Affair: The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal over the wrongful conviction of French officer Alfred Dreyfus for treason. Dreyfus's imprisonment on the island became a focal point of this national crisis.
Napoleon III: Napoleon III was emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. His government established the penal colony in French Guiana in 1852.
Île Saint-Joseph: Île Saint-Joseph is a Salvation Island that held a prison for solitary confinement. Its isolation cells show the range of punishment available within the island complex.
Henri Charrière: Henri Charrière was a French convict whose memoir Papillon recounts imprisonment and escape from the Guiana penal system. His bestselling memoir helped turn the penal colony into a global legend.
Papillon: Papillon is Henri Charrière's 1969 memoir of imprisonment and escape from the French penal colony in Guiana. The book popularized a dramatic, disputed account of life and escape in the colony.
French penal colonies: French penal colonies were overseas institutions that transported and confined convicts under French authority. Devil's Island became the best-known site within France's overseas system of penal exile.
Solitary confinement: Solitary confinement is the isolation of a prisoner from other people for a period of time. It was imposed at nearby Île Saint-Joseph as a severe colonial punishment.

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