French Guiana — map and facts

About French Guiana

French Guiana is an overseas region and department of France, located on the northeastern coast of South America, bordered by Brazil to the south and east and Suriname to the west. It is the only territory of the European Union on the mainland of South America. The capital is Cayenne, and the total population is approximately 300,000, though estimates vary due to significant undocumented migration. As an integral part of France, French Guiana uses the euro and its residents are French citizens with full voting rights in French national elections. The territory is governed by both a departmental council and a regional council. The economy is dominated by the French state, with the European Space Agency's Guiana Space Centre at Kourou representing a major employer and a significant source of revenue. Aerospace, forestry, fishing, and small-scale gold mining are other economic activities. Poverty rates remain high relative to metropolitan France.

Geography and Landscape

French Guiana covers approximately 84,000 square kilometres, making it the largest of France's overseas regions. The territory is dominated by dense equatorial rainforest, which covers more than 90 percent of the land area and is part of the vast Amazon basin ecosystem. The terrain rises from a narrow coastal plain to the interior highlands, with the Tumuc-Humac Mountains forming the southern border with Brazil. The Maroni River marks the border with Suriname to the west, and numerous rivers drain the interior. The climate is equatorial and humid, with two wet and two dry seasons annually and rainfall exceeding 3,000 millimetres in many areas. Biodiversity is exceptional, with thousands of plant species, jaguars, tapirs, harpy eagles, and river dolphins. The Guiana Amazonian Park, established in 2007, is one of the largest national parks in the world and protects a vast portion of the pristine interior rainforest.

History

The region was inhabited by Amerindian peoples for thousands of years before European arrival. French colonists attempted to settle the coast from the early seventeenth century, but repeated failures, tropical disease, and conflict with indigenous peoples impeded permanent settlement. The French established firmer control in the mid-seventeenth century, and the colony developed a plantation economy based on enslaved African labour. French Guiana was briefly occupied by the Portuguese during the Napoleonic Wars. From 1852 to 1953 it served as a penal colony, with the infamous Devil's Island offshore becoming a symbol of harsh French penal practices. The Dreyfus Affair drew international attention to Devil's Island in the 1890s. After the abolition of the penal colony, the territory experienced economic stagnation before being administratively integrated into France in 1946 as an overseas department. The establishment of the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou in 1968 gave the territory renewed strategic importance.