History History

On his^third voyage, Christopher Columbus set out to explore South America. It was at this time that he first sailed along the coast of French Guiana. In 1499, the Spanish captain Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, Columbus' companion on his^first voyage, armed 4 caravels bound for South America. A storm brought him to the north of Brazil and Guyana in 1500. He explores this territory by taking the Oyapock and goes up the Amazon for 50 kilometers. The Amerindian population in what is now French Guiana was then estimated at 30,000 individuals, mainly distributed along the coast. Treated as inferior beings by the settlers, these natives soon showed fierce hostility towards them. Several missions to develop French Guiana ended in abject failure.

The French settled in the region of the future Cayenne as early as 1503, but these occupations remained temporary and it was not until the following century that real colonisation took place.

Daniel de La Touche and Admiral François de Razilly, at the head of a French expedition, discovered the current Brazilian state of Maranhão and founded the city of Saint-Louis, which would soon be taken by the Portuguese who renamed it São Luis. The French continued their colonization of the region, then called Equinoxial France, further north. In 1626, the Guyanese colony became part of this project, and was later named Equinoxial France.

The big companies, such as those of the Northern Cape or Equinoxial France, must review their position and undertake negotiations with the Indian chief Ceperu. In 1643, he allowed the governor of Cap-Nord, Poncet de Brétigny, to settle on Cépérou hill. The town of Cayenne was thus founded.

In spite of this, the colonisation of French Guiana is far from being a foregone conclusion. If they have succeeded in neutralising the hostility of the local populations, the Europeans will experience the greatest setbacks with the natural environment. Moreover, the English seized French Guiana in 1647 and destroyed Cayenne. Five years later, the first black slaves landed in French Guiana. In 1667, thanks to the Treaty of Bréda, the Dutch became masters of French Guiana, which was soon reconquered in December 1676 by Admiral d'Estrées. Guiana came back under French domination and became a slave colony. Coffee, cocoa and other crops make their appearance. Slaves living in extreme conditions, with an unlimited workload and regular punishments and other corporal punishment, more or less organized revolts never cease to erupt.

In order to ensure the prosperity of the colonies and to reduce the frequency of these uprisings, Louis XIV adopted the "Black Code", established and promulgated by Colbert in 1685: 60 articles defining, among other things, the status of slaves and punishments. This civil code for the use of settlers in the French West Indies and equinoxial France contains sixty articles. The status - or rather the lack of legal status of slaves - is largely detailed in it, and will give rise to other later versions. The substance remains the same: the massive use of men and women for sugar cane plantations was to be regulated for the "good of public order" and was not to give rise to any familiarity with slaves. While in metropolitan France voices are already being raised against this system, in the colonies anything goes. Slaves had to be baptized (Article 2). They could marry each other, with the agreement of the master (article 10), who had the right of life or death over them. The masters must feed them (Article 22), clothe them (Article 25) and look after old or sick slaves (Article 27). On the other hand, masters have free hands in terms of repression and display a wide range of disciplinary corrections. The "commodification" of man appears to be the most violent feature of the Black Code. Various corporal punishments are gradually codified according to the "fault committed". A slave can be chained, beaten, mutilated and even killed if he has tried to flee, rebel or steal. Article 43 regulates these acts and ensures that excessive behaviour by masters is controlled. The Black Code only gives an idea of the situation of slaves - the reality was even harsher

These two treaties put an end to the War of the Spanish Succession (the first, signed on 11 April between France and Great Britain, the second, signed on 13 July, between Spain and Great Britain) and gave rise, among other things, to a redistribution of the territorial possessions of the Western European Kingdoms. It was at this time that it was decided that the Oyapock River would constitute the border between French Guyana and Portuguese Brazil.

In 1763, Choiseul organized a vast operation to populate and develop French Guiana: the Kourou expedition. 15 000 Europeans will then land in Kourou in appalling conditions. Very quickly, dysentery, yellow fever, syphilis and malaria will soon overwhelm the hopes of these settlers, carrying 10,000 of them away in atrocious conditions. The survivors settled on the Devil's Islands (later renamed the Salvation Islands) to flee the diseases and epidemics on the mainland. Those who finally regained their health returned to France. It is from their stories that the terrible image of French Guiana will be born, which for a long time will be detrimental to it. After this resounding failure, the country will go through a troubled period without any real authority. It was not until Napoleon I that the situation recovered.

Jean Samuel Guisan, a Swiss agricultural engineer working since 1771 in neighbouring Suriname (Netherlands), was spotted by Pierre-Victor Malouet (sent to French Guiana by the French Ministry of Colonies) who offered him a mission of land planning in French Guiana. For 15 years, the engineer developed the mouth of the River Approuague - using the technique of partial bank reclamation - and built the Kaw Canal. The whole area would later become a prosperous agricultural region.

The French Revolution brought about the first abolition of slavery in all the colonies. From 1795, Devil's Island will serve as a place of political deportation throughout the revolutionary period. Under the Directoire, more than 300 prisoners were exiled, most of them priests.

Napoleon Bonaparte officially restored slavery in order to re-establish the colonial economy.

At the beginning of the 19th century, France suffered the effects of the defeat of Trafalgar (1805). The English and Portuguese landed in Cayenne in 1809 and occupied the territory for eight years, without disrupting the daily life of the inhabitants.

Following an agreement between Portugal and France, French Guiana was officially returned to France in 1817. The agricultural programme launched by Guisan was restarted, and development projects based on the use of slaves in plantations multiplied. With 19,000 inhabitants, including 13,000 slaves, the colony was experiencing the most prosperous period in its history.

Following the 1848 Revolution, which took place in Paris from 22 to 25 February, the abolition of slavery was decreed in all French territories. This event led to the ruin of the plantations and the liberation of their 13,000 slaves. Little by little, a breath of freedom spread throughout French Guyana. The principle of emancipation implies that any slave touching French soil is declared free. This decision provokes the mass flight of slaves under the control of Brazilian owners. The latter reacted very violently: in May 1851, they went to Mapa to recover 200 runaway slaves. This case raised the delicate problem of the limits of French territory.

From 1852 to 1938, it welcomed nearly 90,000 convicts and gave the colony a sinister reputation. Initially, the convicts were sent to the most remote and unhealthy places, notably on the Montagne d'Argent near the Oyapock and Cacao, and employed in vast and very difficult land reclamation work. But the losses among the inmates are enormous. In May 1854, a law led to the creation of the Transportation camp and a few years later, in 1858, the authorities founded the Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni detention centre. The prison administration takes on a new dimension and gets organised. It was then planned to use prisoners to compensate for the lack of local labour.

Long sought-after (didn't the first European expeditions to this part of the world try to find the famous Eldorado?), the first gold deposits were discovered in French Guiana. Very quickly, Creoles, Coolie Indians (who arrived in numbers as early as 1859 to make up for the lack of manpower caused by the abolition of slavery), Africans, and even Amerindians learned to handle crowbars, shovels and wheelbarrows: this was the beginning of the gold rush. The dense forest terrain made the exploitation of the veins long and arduous, and especially difficult to mechanize.

Alfred Dreyfus is sentenced to deportation to a fortified enclosure and military degradation. He will stay for four years on Devil's Island.

Imprisoned for treason and at the origin of a major political crisis in France, Dreyfus is undoubtedly the most famous convict in French Guiana. In 1894, this Jewish polytechnic captain of Alsatian origin was sentenced to life imprisonment after a mockery of justice. He is accused of having delivered secret documents to the German enemy (France has lost Alsace and part of Lorraine since 1871). French society was then undermined by the rise of nationalism and anti-Semitism: the French were divided between dreyfusards and antidreyfusards. Landed on Île Royale in 1895 and imprisoned in the greatest secrecy, Alfred Dreyfus was transferred a few days after his arrival on Devil's Island, and rumours of escape attempts led his guards to isolate him completely. Meanwhile, the family of the fallen captain is doing everything to prove his innocence. It was finally, among other things, the publication on 13 January 1898 in the newspaper L'Aurore of the famous J'accuse d'Émile Zola, the day after the acquittal of Walsin Esterhazy (the real traitor recognised by the head of counter-espionage), that finally brought about a collective awareness. A new trial sentenced the captain to ten years in prison in 1899 before he was granted a presidential pardon. He was finally cleared of all suspicion in 1906 and took part in the First World War.

Franco-Brazilian confrontations following a dispute arising from the interpretation of the Treaties of Utrecht (1713), which established the borders between Guyana and Brazil. The verdict finally came down and French Guiana lost 26,000 km².

After the eruption of Mount Pelée (Martinique), French Guiana gave refuge to part of the Martinican population.

The organization of gold mining is a failure. In an attempt to rectify the situation, Governor Ronmy convinced the ministry to cut the territory of Guyana in half: this led to the creation of the territory of Inini. But the project got bogged down and the gold miners, deep in the woods, continued to provide the bulk of the colony's income. By the time the Second World War broke out, the gold industry had disappeared from French Guiana: the machines were no longer used and the large companies, with rare exceptions, had lost all interest in gold production. The era of tinkering, marauders and the reign of the traders began: despite gold, or perhaps because of it, French Guiana found itself on the road to industrial underdevelopment.

Guillaume Seznec, found guilty of the murder of Pierre Quéméneur, General Councillor of Finistère, is sentenced to hard labour and sent to French Guiana. Following the closure of the penal colony, his sentence was reduced in 1947 and he returned to mainland France. In 1954, he was hit by a van in Paris and died as a result of his injuries.

Henri Charriere, accused of murder, is sentenced to life imprisonment in prison in French Guiana. Made famous for his romantic testimony on the conditions of life in prison and for his escapes, bestseller published in 1968 under the title Butterfly, the man died in 1973 in Madrid.

French Guiana joins the Free France of General de Gaulle.

Born in Cayenne to a family of "new freemen" (the abolition of slavery only goes back some forty years before his birth), Félix Éboué went to Bordeaux in 1898 to complete his secondary education and ten years later obtained his law degree. He became a colonial administrator from 1933 until his death (Martinique, Sudan, Guadeloupe, Chad, then Governor General of French Equatorial Africa). A humanist and freemason, while he was governor of Chad (then French), as soon as General de Gaulle's appeal of 18 June 1940, he joined the ranks of the resistance and decreed Chadian territory to belong to that of Free France. Although he had little residence in French Guiana, he remained a major historical figure (Cayenne airport is named after him). The man has been buried in the Pantheon since 20 May 1949.

The official status of Overseas Department is granted to French Guyana, which will accede to the status of Region in 1975. At that time, only the coastline was relatively active in terms of human and economic activity. Everything remained to be done on this still wild territory marked by a tragic history.

After studying at Cayenne College, René Jadfard heard the call of the Guyanese forest and decided to discover the daily life of gold panning sites. As he confesses in his book Nuit de cachiri, he learns to live with the Saramaca, the Bonis, the Indians and the Brazilians. In the aftermath of the 1914-1918 war, he endeavoured to complete his secondary education in mainland France, at the lycée in Toulouse, then attended the École des hautes études sociales and the École des sciences politiques in Paris. A radical-socialist and human rights activist, he campaigned in 1924 for the Left Bloc, then became a journalist and travelled the world. Mobilised in September 1939, he joined the Resistance the following year before being imprisoned by the Gestapo, then released on liberation. Back in French Guiana, he was elected deputy on 10 November 1946. He died during the night of 8 to 9 November 1947, near Sinnamary, in a plane crash.

The installation of the communist regime in Beijing led to the arrival of many Chinese in Guyana.

In 1925, the report published by Albert London on the prison had already put the institution on hold, so that in 1936, the Popular Front decided to stop sending prisoners to Guyanese territory. It was only in 1953 that the last convicts left the penitentiary camps in French Guyana.

It is decided that French Guiana will become Europe's spaceport: the Guyana Space Centre (CSG) is to be set up in Kourou. The establishment of the CSG generates many jobs and generates considerable economic development for the whole of French Guiana: roads, hospitals, shops, etc. are being built. The first successful launch of the Ariane rocket takes place on Christmas Eve 1979.

Launch of the "Green Plan" by Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, under the Giscard d'Estaing government: a vast agricultural development project for French Guiana.

Following the war that ravaged the Indochinese peninsula in the 1970s, a Hmong population, originally from Laos, settled in Guyana and created two villages: Cacao and Javouhey

Decentralisation laws make French Guyana a territorial collectivity. It then created a Regional Council and a General Council. A policy of major public projects was put in place. At the same time, migration flows linked to the social and economic crises of neighbouring countries (Brazil, Suriname and Haiti) increased. The impact of this policy of major projects is only slightly felt and unemployment is soaring. In 1994, following the State/Regional Plan Contract, French Guiana will receive FRF 1.5 billion in aid over four years, in addition to FRF 1 billion in aid from the European Community for the same period.

Arrival of 9,000 Surinamese refugees after the coup in Suriname.

Awala-Yalimapo, a commune created on 31 December 1988, hosts the first conference of the Amerindians of French Guiana. The 22 associations that make it up are grouped together in a federation whose president is Félix Tiouka. In December 1993, the first congress of the Federation of Amerindian Organizations of Guyana (FOAG) is held.

During the referendum on the European Constitution, French Guiana and the other overseas departments are called to the polls on the eve of a national vote to counter the time difference. Unlike France, French Guiana voted in favour of the text, with the "yes" vote obtaining 60.08% of the votes.

Visit of President Nicolas Sarkozy elected the previous year to discuss various themes such as illegal gold panning, the environment, space policy, public service, military cooperation with Brazil... This twenty-nine hour visit ended with a meeting with Brazilian President Lula da Silva in Saint George's to discuss, amongst other things, the situation of FARC hostages in Colombia and the bridge over the Oyapock.

A wind of revolt is blowing in Guyana, as in other overseas departments: high cost of living, low wages, rising unemployment rate, the DOM are going through a difficult period and are demanding changes from local elected officials and the State. Following massive strikes lasting more than two weeks, the government reacted by creating the "états généraux de l'outre-mer" in 2009 in order to restore dialogue between metropolitan France and the DOM.

Christiane Taubira, born in 1952 in Cayenne, is appointed Keeper of the Seals of the government of François Hollande, newly elected President of the Republic.

An ambush by clandestine gold diggers killed 2 French soldiers. This event raises the issue of security: the Guyanese are asking the government to put an end to illegal gold panning, a source of illegal immigration and banditry around the sites.

Start of service station strikes throughout French Guiana, with managers demanding an increase in their margins. After 7 weeks of conflict, a "margin of 1.04 cents" is finally granted by the State.

An agreement is reached in Europe for the launch of the new Ariane 6 European rocket, scheduled for first firing in 2022 (but not until 2024).

French Guyana is seeing the start of its biggest social crisis: the population is pointing the finger at the lack of security (denounced in particular by the charismatic collective of 500 Brothers), infrastructures and personnel that the territory is suffering from. On 25 March the Pou Lagwiyann Dékolé collective declared a general strike and set up roadblocks on the main roads and places of life in the department. Shops, schools and the airport are closed, and rockets cannot take off. On March 28th a big march gathers more than 8,000 people in the streets of Cayenne and 3,000 in the streets of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. On 31 March, Interior Minister Matthias Fekl and Overseas Minister Ericka Bareigts travelled to French Guiana and attempted the first negotiations with the Pou Lagwiyann Dékolé collective. After a month of conflict, a draft agreement was signed ending the strike on 21 April. The agreement provides in particular for the implementation of an immediate 1.1 billion euro emergency plan and priority consideration of the request for 2.1 billion euros in additional funding requested by the Pou Lagwiyann Dékolé collective. However, the question of changing the status of French Guiana towards greater freedom vis-à-vis metropolitan France, a key demand of the collective, remains open.

Emmanuel Macron supports the vast gold project carried out by the Russian multinational Nordgold and the Canadian multinational Columbus Gold in the heart of the Guyanese equatorial forest, on the border with Suriname. A project that could have serious ecological consequences and is strongly opposed by Amerindian organizations.

To green the image of his party, launched in the middle of the European women's campaign, Emmanuel Macron seems to be changing his tune by announcing that the Montagne d'Or project "is not compatible with the ambition" he has set himself in terms of environmental protection. Although officially abandoned, for some divergent voices, the mega-mining project has not yet been completely buried. Pierre Paris, president of the Montagne d'Or company, stated in mid-June 2019 that not mining this gold meant leaving the field open to the gold panning mafia.

30 km west of the aborted Montagne d'Or site, a new gigantic open-pit mining project called "Espérance" is under study.

Sharing a common border with Brazil, the second country most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the worsening of the health situation in French Guiana seems to have come from its neighbor from May 2020, then in March 2021, despite the closure of its borders decided by the national authorities.

Gabriel Serville succeeds Rodolphe Alexandre at the head of the French Guiana Assembly. The former succeeded in uniting the left to defeat the latter with a clear majority.

Following a referral from the Conseil d'Etat, the French Constitutional Council rejected the extension of the mining concession, and this decision could well put a definitive stop to the Montagne d'Or mining project.

Last Ariane 5 launch. This ^117th launch marked the end of a 27-year history, marked by more than 80 consecutive successes. Its successor, Ariane 6, is scheduled for launch in 2024 (for more information, please refer to the thematic dossier on "The space center and the Ariane rocket").