La Guyane est à la fois une région et un département d'outre-mer français. Avec ses 86 504 km² de superficie, la Guyane est le plus grand département français. Elle est en outre le seul territoire français et de l'Union européenne du continent sud-américain. La forêt équatoriale couvre la plus grande partie (96%) du territoire. Son nom officiel est Guyane. L'ajout de l'adjectif française dans les dénominations courantes n'est qu'une commodité de langage issue de la période coloniale, pendant laquelle existaient trois Guyanes : la Guyane britannique (actuel Guyana), la Guyane néerlandaise (actuel Suriname) et la Guyane française.
English
French Guiana - Department of Guiana - Region of Guiana
French Guiana is an overseas department of France, located on the northern coast of South America with borders to ► Brazil and ► Suriname. Like the other DOMs, French Guiana is also an overseas region of France. As a part of France, French Guiana is in the ► European Union.
Short name
French Guiana
Official name
Department of Guiana - Region of Guiana
Status
► French overseas region, French since the 17th century
This section holds a short summary of the history of the area of present-day French Guiana, illustrated with maps, including historical maps of former countries and empires that included present-day French Guiana.
Present-day French Guiana is originally inhabited by Arawaks and Galibi Indians. In 1626 a first French settlement in the region is founded and in 1634 the city of Cayenne is established. Shortly the area is under Dutch control, but since the Breda Treaty of 1667 French Guiana becomes a French colony in 1674. It is temporarely ruled by Portugal/Brazil between 1909 and 1817. In 1946 French Guiana becomes a French overseas département and is ruled as part of mainland France.
Old maps
This section holds copies of original general maps more than 70 years old.
18th century map of Venezuela and the Guyanas
Notes and references
General remarks:
The WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Atlas of the World is an organized and commented collection of geographical, political and historical maps available at Wikimedia Commons. The main page is therefore the portal to maps and cartography on Wikimedia. That page contains links to entries by country, continent and by topic as well as general notes and references.
Every entry has an introduction section in English. If other languages are native and/or official in an entity, introductions in other languages are added in separate sections. The text of the introduction(s) is based on the content of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. For sources of the introduction see therefore the Wikipedia entries linked to. The same goes for the texts in the history sections.
Historical maps are included in the continent, country and dependency entries.
The status of various entities is disputed. See the content for the entities concerned.
The maps of former countries that are more or less continued by a present-day country or had a territory included in only one or two countries are included in the atlas of the present-day country. For example the Ottoman Empire can be found in the Atlas of Turkey.