French colonial empire facts for kids

Quick facts for kids French Colonial Empire Empire colonial français
1534–1946
Flag
French conquests and territories over the centuries
Capital and largest city	Paris
• Upper house	Bourbon Bonaparte
History
• Established	1534
• Cartier planted the French flag at Gaspé Bay	24 July 1534
• Louisiana Purchase by Napoleon Bonaparte	30 April 1803
• Independence of Vanuatu	30 July 1980
• Disestablished	1946
Area
24,000,000 km2 (9,300,000 sq mi)
ISO 3166 code	FR
Today part of	Countries today  Algeria  Antarctica  Benin  Burkina Faso  Cambodia  Cameroon  Canada  Central African Republic  Chad  Comoros  Congo, Republic of the  Djibouti  Dominican Republic  France  Gabon  Guinea  Haiti  India  Ivory Coast  Laos  Lebanon  Libya  Madagascar  Mauritania  Mauritius  Mali  Morocco  Niger  Senegal  Seychelles  Syria  Togo  Tunisia  Vanuatu  Vietnam  United States  Suriname  Thailand  Israel  Palestine  Iraq  South Africa  Australia  Guyana  Spain  Netherlands  Germany  Italy  Portugal  Belgium  Monaco  Luxembourg  Poland  Egypt

The French colonial Empire was land controlled by the French from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 17th and 18th centuries France gained and lost large territories in North America and India. Like the other empires of the time, was powered by slaves captured from Africa. The Haitian Revolution, when many of these slaves in the colony of Saint Domingue fought and defeated the French, caused major changes in the empire.

Sometimes, people say there was a first and a second French colonial empire. The "first colonial empire" was from the French colonization of the Americas to the Napoleonic Wars. The "second colonial empire" is the French colonies in Africa.

From the 16th to the 17th centuries, the First French colonial empire stretched from a total area at its peak in 1680 to over 10,000,000 square kilometres (3,900,000 sq mi), the second largest empire in the world at the time behind only the Spanish Empire. In terms of land area, the Second French colonial empire extended to over 13,500,000 square kilometres (5,200,000 sq mi) at its peak in 1936, the second largest in the world at the time, which accounted for 10% of the world's land area. The total land area of the first and second French colonial empire combined reached 24,000,000 square kilometres (9,300,000 sq mi).

Images for kids

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  French North America was known as 'Nouvelle France' or New France.

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  Arrival of Marshal Randon in Algiers in 1857 by Ernest Francis Vacherot

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  French and other European settlements in Colonial India

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  The British invasion of Martinique in 1809

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  Animated map showing the growth and decline of the first and second French colonial empires

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  Queen Pōmare IV in 1860. Tahiti was made a French protectorate in 1842, and annexed as a colony of France in 1880.

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  The last photograph of Napoleon III (1872)

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  French trading post on Gorée, an island offshore of Senegal

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  The French expedition in Syria led by General Beaufort d'Hautpoul, landing in Beyrouth on 16 August 1860

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  The French conquest of Algeria

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  The Presidential Palace of Vietnam, in Hanoi, was built between 1900 and 1906 to house the French Governor-General of Indochina.

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  The captured rebels of Raiatea, 1897

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  Comparison of Africa in the years 1880 and 1913

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  French colonial troops, led by Colonel Alfred-Amédée Dodds, a Senegalese mulatto, conquered and annexed Dahomey in 1894.

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  Captured French soldiers from Dien Bien Phu, escorted by Vietnamese troops, walk to a prisoner-of-war camp

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  Capture of Saigon by Charles Rigault de Genouilly on 18 February 1859, painted by Antoine Morel-Fatio

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  Napoleon III receiving the Siamese embassy at the palace of Fontainebleau in 1864

See also

In Spanish: Imperio colonial francés para niños