r/FrenchEmpire has now re-opened as a community for sharing and discussing images, videos, articles and questions pertaining to the French colonial empire.

🇫🇷 Le 27 août 1664, fondation de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales par Louis XIV à l'initiative de Colbert. La France se dote d'un outil pour le commerce international. La ville de Lorient est créée pour la construction navale.

🇫🇷🇨🇦 Le 7 juillet 1620, Hélène Boullé, épouse de Champlain, arriva en Nouvelle-France. Appréciant la compagnie des Indiens, elle apprit suffisamment d'algonquien pour enseigner le catéchisme aux enfants. Confrontée à des difficultés financières, elle retourna en France en 1624.

🇫🇷🇭🇹 Le 6 février 1802, Napoléon Bonaparte envoya une expédition militaire à Saint-Domingue (l'actuel Haïti), commandée par Charles Leclerc, dans le but de réprimer la révolte des esclaves et de rétablir la domination française sur la colonie, et donc l'esclavage.

🇫🇷🇧🇷 « Des sauvages brésiliens amenés à Paris et baptisés devant Louis XIII le 24 juin 1613; d'après une gravure du cabinet Hennin. » Illustration extraite du livre « L'Ancienne France, La Marine et Les Colonies, Commerce » (Firmin-Didot, 1888).

🇫🇷🇧🇷 La grande défaite de Jean Calvin au Brésil

🇬🇧🇫🇷🇨🇦 La bataille de la Ristigouche

🇫🇷🇨🇦 Le 20 octobre 1671, l'intendant Jean Talon publia une ordonnance encourageant les jeunes hommes célibataires à se marier; à défaut, ils perdraient le droit de pêcher, de chasser et de commercer les fourrures. À cette époque, on comptait une femme à marier pour sept trappeurs.

🇫🇷🇨🇦 Le 24 octobre 1621, le premier baptême en Nouvelle-France fut enregistré. Le père Denis, un frère récollet, baptisa Eustache Martin, fils d'Abraham Martin, dit l'Écossais, et de Marie Langlois, à Québec.

🇫🇷🇧🇷 Antarctic France or Rio de Janeiro. Map extracted from the trips that Villegagnon and Jean de Leri made to Brazil in 1557 and 1558. Map from the 1660s by Pierre Duval. National Library of France.

One Minute History: Napoleon in Russia

One Minute History: Napoleon’s Sanctions War

🇩🇪🇫🇷🇻🇳 Nazis in the French Foreign Legion. "The Last Battle of the SS" in Vietnam.

🇫🇷🇪🇸🇺🇸 On October 1, 1800, lost in 1762, Louisiana was briefly returned to French control following the Treaty of San Ildefonso signed between France and Spain. In 1803, France sold the nearly 2,600,000 km² of Louisiana for 80 million French francs ($15 million).

🇫🇷🇨🇦 On October 4, 1727, Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry, engineer to the king, presented to Quebec the "Plan of the city of Montreal in Canada New France". Pen and wash drawing at a scale of 1:3,600.

🇫🇷🇨🇦 On October 22, 1661, on an urgent diplomatic mission, Pierre Boucher sailed from Quebec to France to defend the cause of the colony before Louis XIV. He asked for help to protect the colony from the Iroquois. The king promised to send reinforcements.

One Minute History: Louisiana

The history behind the statue of the first governor of Senegal, Louis Faidherbe in Lille, France

🇫🇷🇨🇦 On July 22, 1629, the first black slave arrived in New France. Captured as a child in Madagascar, he is purchased by English traders (the Kirke brothers), who capture Quebec that same year. He will be sold to a French colonist and baptized Olivier Le Jeune by the Jesuits.

🇫🇷🇩🇿 On July 5, 1830, the French army completed the conquest of Algeria: the capitulation of Algiers marked the beginning of French Algeria. In particular, it marked the end of 500 years of slave trade and Barbary piracy that had devastated the coasts of Mediterranean Europe.

🇫🇷🇺🇸 In 1719, to establish a French colony in Louisiana (current US territory), Parisian prisoners were offered freedom on the condition that they marry a prostitute and settle there to start a family.

🇫🇷🇨🇦 On October 18, 1690, 72-year-old Guillaume Couture, captain of the Pointe-Lévy militia, repels the troops of Admiral William Phips on the south coast of Quebec. Phips wanted to conquer Pointe-Lévy in preparation for the Battle of Quebec.

🇫🇷🇨🇦 On March 29, 1680, the Jesuits obtained land from King Louis XIV in Sault Saint-Louis to establish an Iroquois mission (present-day Kahnawake). These lands were offered to Iroquois converts who were suffering oppression from traditionalists in their community.

🇫🇷🇺🇸 On October 18, 1646, living among the Iroquois in Ossernenon, New York, where he was going to negotiate peace, Father Isaac Jogues was accused of being responsible for the poor harvest. He was executed, his head displayed and his body thrown into the Mohawk River. He was canonized in 1930.

🇫🇷🇨🇦 On July 7, 1534, Jacques Cartier arrived in the Bay of Chaleur. There he met the Micmacs and an exchange of goods took place, which history records as the first commercial gesture between the French and the Indians.