Language/Guianese-creole-french/Culture/French-Guiana-Timeline

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Historical Timeline for French Guiana - A chronology of key events
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Before the XVIIth century[edit | edit source]

  • Towards the sixth millennium BC. AD, first traces of Amerindian peoples: pottery, rock engravings, polishers, etc. These tribes would have descendants who are the Emerillons and the Wayampis, speaking Tupi-Guarani. These first peoples would have started the process of creating the fertile lands of Terra preta, which a few millennia later will allow the establishment of populations at higher densities than the poor natural soils allow.
  • At the end of the 3rd century, coming from the west and the south, the Arawaks and Palikurs Indians, probably from Amazonia, arrived on the coast and hunted the first inhabitants, they spoke languages of the Arawak linguistic family.
  • At the end of the 8th century, Caribbean Indians, the Kalinas (or Galibis) and Wayanas peoples in turn occupied the coasts and the east of present-day Guyana, they spoke the Caribbean.
  • Several dozen Amerindian nations have jointly or successively populated Guyana and the current Brazilian state of Amapa for 400 years.
  • Archaeo-historical clues suggest that in the XVIth century, at least part of the sub-groups that will give the Wayana, lived in the North of the Amazon. Quite recently, at the beginning of the XVIIIth century, gradually going back up the Paru de leste and the Jari, they seem to have absorbed hunter-gatherer peoples (including Upurui and Opagwana from the Tumuc Humac mountains). The Wayampi are cited by the Portuguese in the XVIIth century as occupying the banks of the Rio Xingu south of the Amazon, which they seem to have crossed in successive waves after 1720.
  • In the XVIIIth century, two Amerindian nations moved northwards, while invaders from overseas colonized South America, bringing unknown weapons and microbes to this continent. It is the time of colonization which arrives.
  • On August 5, 1498, during his third voyage, Christopher Columbus sailed along the coast of Guyana for the first time. Native Amerindian populations occupy the coast, and are estimated at around 30,000 Amerindians for French Guiana, in the following century, decimated, they will be no more than 25,000.
  • In 1499 and 1500, the first exploration of Guyana was made by the Spanish Vicente Yañez Pinzon who explored the coasts of the Guyana plateau between the deltas of the Amazon and the Orinoco.
  • The Guyanas were not affected by the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 which drew the territorial limits between Spain and Portugal, around 1503, a first group of French colonists would have settled in the island of Cayenne for a few years.

XVIIth century[edit | edit source]

  • From 1604 to 1652, several attempts at colonization will partially fail:
  • In 1604, Captain Daniel de la Rivardière was the first Frenchman to make a serious reconnaissance of Guyana. The country was then called Equinoctial France.
  • In 1624, the King of France Louis XIII ordered the installation of the first settlers from Normandy. In 1626, Cardinal Richelieu authorized the colonization of Guyana. In 1630, a new colony settled on the banks of the Sinnamary under the orders of Constant d'Aubigné, son of Agrippa d'Aubigné and father of the future Marquise de Maintenon, wife of King Louis XIV. In 1638: Cardinal Richelieu entrusted Captain Bontemps with the task of colonizing the territories of Guyana with 1,200 French people. In 1643, the French Charles Poncet de Brétigny, joined the first settlers at the head of a group of 400 new settlers, the Compagnie de Rouen. He bought from the Indians Galibi, a hill at the mouth of the Cayenne River and gave it the name “Mont Cépérou” after the Indian chief. He built a small village there, which he fortified. It is the birth of Cayenne. However, proclaiming himself ruler of Guyana, he resorts to persecution and humiliation against the native Indians who end up revolting. In 1648, there were only 25 French settlers left. In 1652, a new expedition was organized with 650 colonists. However ill-prepared, they were quickly wiped out by the Indians and fevers. The survivors flee to the Dutch possessions. In 1654, the English seized French Guyana [2] In 1656, Dutch Marrano Jewish settlers returned to Cayenne and built the first sugar refinery. They will import the first African slaves, a condition considered at that time as necessary for the development of the territory.
  • In 1662, the French returned with some 800 recruits, the "Compagnie des Douze Seigneurs", but by 1663, the Dutch found the vacant place and settled there again.
  • But from 1664, Guyana again became a French colony and the French themselves continued the slavery policy, which would develop a lot from 1669, in particular under the impetus given by Colbert with the Black Code of 1685 which organized the slave system by specifying the duties ofmasters and slaves and stripped the slave of all his identity. After compulsory Catholic baptism, the African became a Negro slave, changing his name, abandoning his dress habits and his language, then was branded with a hot iron and assigned to bonded labor. The colony developed thanks to the export of annatto, indigo, cotton, sugar cane, coffee, vanilla, spices and exotic woods. The Franco-English rivalries bring Guyana under the control of England, which, after having seized the territory, finally ceded it to Holland by the Treaty of Breda in 1667. The French admiral d'Estrées reconquered it for the account of France.
  • From 1670, the French minister Colbert initiated a major agricultural development policy. The Jesuits, advisers to the governor, launched large plantations where sugar cane, cotton, indigo, cocoa, coffee, vanilla, and other spices were cultivated. Thanks to the abundant slave trade from Africa, it is possible to set up paper and brick factories as well as mining, all its industries are based on servile human force.
  • The Dutch take the French establishments of Guyana in 1676 temporarily.
  • At the end of the XVIIth century, French explorations organized from Guyana discovered the territory of the Araguary, now Brazilian.

XVIIIth century[edit | edit source]

  • In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht considered the Maroni river to be the western border of French Guyana. By this treaty, King Louis XIV totally abandons the Amazon basin to the Portuguese, but the difficulty in fixing the geographical borders in the Amazon will be the source of disputes for two centuries, the two parties not ceasing to seek the extension of their respective territories, by the installation of military posts, religious missions and trading posts. These disputes will end in 1900 with a Swiss arbitration.
  • Around 1750, many Amerindians settled on the territory.
  • In 1762, the Jesuits were expelled from Guyana on the orders of Louis XV. : The expulsion of the Jesuits (royal ordinance of Louis XV) precedes the establishment in Guyana by the will of the French Minister Choiseul of a new settlement, thousands of people are sent from France to decisively accelerate the colonization of the land. This proactive policy fails because nothing has been prepared to welcome them.
  • In 1764, following a propaganda campaign carried out especially in Alsace and Lorraine, was going to rush 15,000 French including 12,000 Alsatians and Lorraine to Rochefort to disembark in 1764 in Kourou in the midst of the rains and in the marshes. 12,000 people died in one year from illnesses (dysentery, yellow fever, syphilis) and mosquitoes (malaria). The expedition, led by Choiseul, will be a bitter failure. Finally, around sixty groups of survivors took refuge in the Salvation Islands before returning to France.
  • Long after this serious failure, a competent governor was finally appointed. Pierre-Victor Malouet, assisted by engineer Joseph Guisan, of Swiss origin, undertakes a program to reform agriculture and develop agricultural land. The territory will experience a period of prosperity until the French Revolution.
  • From 1792, the French revolution made Cayenne a place of deportation for refractory priests and political enemies of the revolution. The first penal colony - Sinnamary penal colony - was born and until 1805, the territory became a place of deportation for political opponents to the various regimes which followed one another in France.
  • In 1794, the French republic abolished slavery.

XIXth century[edit | edit source]

  • In 1802 the decree of December 7, presumed by the consul Cambacérès reestablishes slavery for those who have not been freed, in a disguised form "neighborhood conscription" [4], in fact Guyana is not concerned. by the Law of May 20, 1802 which maintains slavery in Martinique. Part of the black population refusing this state, fled into the forest, thus depriving the Guyanese economy of labor, which was also affected by the difficulties in France. These people take the name of maroons and settle on the banks of a river which will take the name of Maroni.
  • After the defeat of the French fleet at Trafalgar, in 1809 Portuguese forces from Brazil and supported by the British, occupy Guyana, in retaliation for the French invasion of Portugal, led by Napoleon I. This occupation, which however did not disturb the daily life of the inhabitants, continued until 1814, when the Portuguese retired the day after the first abdication of Napoleon I.
  • After 1817 and the end of the Napoleonic wars, Guyana will experience a very prosperous period thanks to slavery and the resumption of the development plan of Joseph Guisan.
  • From 1828, the Sisters of Saint-Joseph de Cluny, under the leadership of Mother Anne-Marie Javouhey, bought slaves to free them and give them work in the region of Mana. The French Republican deputy for Martinique and Guadeloupe, Victor Schoelcher, supports their action and develops a political action which will lead to the decree of April 27, 1848 confirmed by the Constitution of November 4, 1848 and which enacts the definitive abolition of the slavery. The new law applicable on French territories, enacts that the principle of emancipation implies that any slave touching French soil is declared free, which will cause the massive flight of slaves placed under the control of the big Brazilian owners who react very violently, and in May 1851, they violate, in Mapa, the territory to recover 200 escaped slaves, which will raise in a more delicate way the problem of the limits between the French, Brazilian and Dutch territories.
  • Disciplinary district ", Saint-Laurent, 1954 However, the end of slavery, which represents nearly 13,000 people out of the 19,000 inhabitants of Guyana, will have the immediate consequences of the departure of slave labor from the plantations and the collapse of the economy. from Guyana. To compensate for the lack of manpower, Napoleon III, decided in 1852, to set up the deportation of convicts to Guyana. Initially, the convicts are sent to the most secluded and unsanitary places, but the losses recorded among the detainees are enormous.
  • At the same time, to compensate for the emancipation of blacks, coolies from India and China were recruited under contract from 1853.
  • From 1854, law of transportation, he built the famous prisons of Cayenne, Devil's Island and Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni (1858). The municipality of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni becomes the administrative center of the penal system, to which nearly 90,000 men and 2,000 women will be sent, more than a third of them will die in Guyana, corruption and social inequality. become the bases of the penitentiary social organization.
  • In 1855, Félix Couy discovered the first gold site on a tributary of the Approuague. Tons of gold are mined from the Inini River, a tributary of Haut-Maroni, in the southwest of the country. It is the beginning of a gold rush which will last until the Second World War and which will bring many emigrants coming mainly from the Antilles. A loan and discount bank is created which attracts other investors who flock to meet the demand which is increasingly strong, but who will start again from 1873 when France will experience a great depression until 1892 .
  • In 1860, the freedom of navigation on the Maroni river was consecrated.
  • From 1861, France and Holland contested the richly gold-bearing territory of the upper reaches of the Maroni River. The French believe that the formative watercourse is the Tapanahoni, while the Dutch maintain that it is the Lawa. In 1891, the dispute was mediated by the Tsar of Russia to the detriment of France, which lost an area of 25,000 km², rich in gold ores.
  • Towards the end of the XIXth century, Lebanese and Chinese from Formosa, Singapore and China came to settle in Guyana.
  • In 1900, a final arbitration rendered by the Swiss Federal Council fixed the Franco-Brazilian border on the Oyapock, to the detriment of French Guyana which lost a territory of 260,000 km². France considered, not without serious reasons, that the "Japoc" river discovered by Vincente Yanez Pinzon in 1499 did not correspond to the Oyapock but to the Araguary river further south, due to the fact that the phenomena of subsidences and accumulation have upset the whole design of the coast between the Amazon and the Oyapock, since the seventeenth century. However, the Brazilians led by Baron de Rio Branco, better prepared and supported by very strong political and diplomatic interests, end up imposing their own vision, putting an end to two centuries of disputes.

XXth century[edit | edit source]

  • At the turn of the century, after the gold rush, the Amerindian population was decimated and numbered more than 1,500 people.
  • After the eruption of Mount Pelée on May 8, 1902, which destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre in Martinique and killed 28,000 people in a few minutes, many Martinicans took refuge in Guyana.
  • From 1902, France and Holland again contested the territory of the upper reaches of the Lawa. The French believe that the formative watercourse is the Litani, while the Dutch maintain that it is the Marouini. In 1935, an agreement will end up being êbe found, to the advantage of the French who thus recovered an area of 6,000 km², rich in gold ores.
  • Between 1910 and 1930, it was the highest in the gold rush. More than 10,000 gold diggers scour the Guyanese forest which leads to a growth in local trade, and the closure of the last large plantations.
  • From 1923, after the visit of journalist Albert Londres, he returned to France and echoed the living conditions of Guyanese convicts. A vast public opinion campaign began, led by Albert Londres, the deputy for Guyana Gaston Monnerville and many journalists, and led in 1938 to a law putting an end to the prison, prohibiting in fact any new transport of convicts, the penalties of forced labor being abolished in French criminal law. In total, some 90,000 convicts were deported to Guyana. However, the effective closure will not take place until 1946, after the Second World War and the last repatriations took place in 1953 and the last convict embarked on April 1. The closure of the penal colony once again destroys the economy of the territory and leads to depopulation.
  • In 1938, a Franco-Dutch-Brazilian commission determined the trijunction point marking the point separating the French, Surinamese and Brazilian territories.
  • In 1940, Guyana declared itself in favor of Marshal Pétain and did not join Free France until March 1943. In the prisons, prisoners were dying of hunger or disease. After the war the sanitary state of the territory is deplorable which obliges the French government to take important sanitary measures.
  • In 1946, Guyana obtained the status of French department, but the territory had great difficulty in taking off economically because of the high production costs and its trade balance was very negative.
  • In 1961, the territory's population amounted to 33,000 inhabitants.
  • From 1963, the question arose of a new French space center as close as possible to the equator to replace that of Colomb-Béchar in Algeria. The decision, taken by General de Gaulle, to build it in Guyana was taken in 1964 because this territory has many advantages:
  • a privileged geographical location close to the equator and favorable to geostationary missions; a large opening to the ocean allowing all orbits inclinations; the absence of cyclones and earthquakes; low population density; moreover, it is a French national territory. Built from 1965, the new Guyanese Space Center (CSG) has since developed, to the rhythm of the French space adventure (“Véronique” probe, “Diamant B” launcher) then European (“Europa II” launcher), then with the European Ariane launcher program, which was to be a real commercial and global success. Today it is Europe's spaceport.
  • On April 9, 1968, the first “Véronique” sounding rocket was launched. From that date until 2003, more than five hundred launches were carried out from the Kourou Center, including more than 160 “Ariane” launches, the first of which took off on December 24, 1979.
  • In the 1970s, Surinam, despite the 1978 convention and the 1988 cooperation agreement, adopted the Dutch theses and contested the border fixed on the Litani; Surinamese maps indicate the border on the Marouini. However, since the civil war that devastated Suriname from 1986 to 1991, the territorial claim is no longer officially mentioned.
  • From 1982, with the laws on decentralization, a transfer of competence from the State to the territorial organizations was put in place.
  • On June 15, 1988, the first copy of the Ariane 4 launcher was launched and on June 4, 1996 the first Ariane 5 launcher (flight 501) was launched, its first commercial flight on December 10, 1999.
  • In the 1990s, Guyana, a French territory therefore integrated into the European Union, became a beacon of well-being and wealth which attracted strong migratory flows from neighboring countries in economic and social crises, such as Haiti, Surinam (formerly Dutch Guyana) and Brazil.
  • In 1999, on the eve of the 21st century, the territory's population officially reached 160,000, but certainly more than 200,000.

XXIst century[edit | edit source]

  • In 2005, the population was officially 187,000 inhabitants. The Amerindian population currently amounts to around 9,000 people, the majority of whom live in “protected areas” with access strictly regulated by the public authorities. It is made up of six groups: the Kalinas (formerly called Galibis) and the Wayanas of the Caribbean language, the Palikurs and the Arawaks proper, of the Arawak language, the Wayampis (or Oyampis) and the Tekos (formerly called Emerillons) of the Tupi language. .
  • Thursday, November 27, 2008: The department of Guyanais blocked by numerous roadblocks erected to protest against the price of fuel at the pump: 1.77 euros for gasoline and 1.55 euros for diesel. The protesters demand a reduction of 50 cents on fuels. The President of the Guyana Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCIG) Jean-Paul Le Pelletier announces the closure of the commercial port and the international airport of Rochambeau. Bibliography The Franco-Brazilian dispute in Guyana, Annales de géographie, volumes VIII, by Paul Vidal de la Blache, 1898 and X, 1901 Only the dead never return: the pioneers of the dry guillotine in French Guyana under the Directory of Philippe de Ladebat, ed. Amalthée, Nantes, 2008 Guyana by Patrick Mouren-Lascaux, ed. Karthala, Paris, 1990 The Amazon Curtain 1713-1900 in The Great Caribbean Encyclopedia, vol. 7 History of Guyana by Andrée Loncan, dir. Vincent Huyghues-Belrose, ed. Sanoli, 1990 Henri Charrière in his novel "Papillon", sold in several million copies, gives a condensed and fairly realistic outline of what this terrible prison could be, although he lent himself to the adventures of many others. convicts.

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