Blackwell Reference Online

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Located on South America's northern coast, French Guiana is an overseas department of France. Originally inhabited by Native Americans, it was settled in the seventeenth century by the French, who used it for penal settlements beginning in 1852. This area has seen a number of protests, the earliest of which involved the struggles of the indigenous peoples to maintain their rights to their homeland. Since the 1970s, there have been protests for autonomy from France, as well as ecological protests against the Guiana Space Center in Kourou . The first contact between the Europeans and the indigenous people can be traced back to the fifteenth century when the first French expedition arrived at French Guiana. The first attempt to evangelize the indigenous people began in 1630, and the rest of the century was characterized by constant indigenous resistance to evangelization, as in every other French colony. In 1643, the French faced an attack by indigenous peoples at the same time as Poncet de Brétigny led a 281-man expedition to establish a foothold in French Guiana. The indigenous resistance, the inability of the Europeans to adapt to the climate, and de Bretigny's unpreparedness caused the expedition to fail. In 1652, a new expedition landed in French Guiana under bishops Marivault and Biet, who arrived with 800 marines, soldiers, and, for the first time, women. This expedition lasted ... log in or subscribe to read full text