French West Indies

The French West Indies are Caribbean territories historically governed by France, including Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint-Domingue, now Haiti.

French colonization of the Americas: France’s establishment of colonies and settlements across the Americas from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. French rule in the Caribbean grew from this wider imperial expansion.
Guadeloupe: A Caribbean archipelago that is an overseas department and region of France. It remains one of the principal territories meant by the name.
Caribbean plantation economy: An export-oriented system of large estates relying chiefly on enslaved labor to produce tropical commodities. Plantations made sugar and other exports central to colonial wealth and social hierarchy.
British West Indies: The Caribbean colonies historically governed by Britain, many of which later became independent states. Their colonial institutions and decolonization trajectories differed from those under French rule.
Treaty of Ryswick: The 1697 treaty that ended the Nine Years’ War and recognized French control of western Hispaniola. Its settlement formalized the French colony of Saint-Domingue.
Martinique: A Caribbean island that is an overseas department and region of France. Its French political status distinguishes it from neighboring independent states.
Atlantic slave trade: The forced transportation of millions of Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It supplied the enslaved labor on which French Caribbean plantation wealth depended.
Dutch Caribbean: Caribbean territories historically or currently connected to the Netherlands. Dutch colonial and constitutional arrangements provide a regional comparison to French administration.
Code Noir: A French royal edict regulating slavery and the legal status of enslaved people in French colonies. It codified rules governing enslaved people in French Caribbean colonies.
Overseas department and region: A French administrative unit outside metropolitan France with departmental and regional powers. This status defines the contemporary relationship of Martinique and Guadeloupe to France.

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