France borders ten countries, but which country shares its longest border with France?
Is it Spain?
Is it Belgium?
It’s actually Brazil.
If you take a look at these little countries between Brazil and Venezuela, there’s Guyana,
a former British colony that gained independence; Suriname, a former Dutch colony that gained
independence; and French Guiana, a former French colony that went the exact other way
to independence, instead becoming a full-fledged region of France, just like Normandie or Hauts-de-France.
To translate that into Freedom-speak, that’s the equivalent of a metric Hawaii becoming
a US state.
So why did it go this way?
Does the region actually want independence?
And can I suss enough material out of this place to make into a full-length video for
my channel?
[This video was brought to you by Blinkist]
Well first, let’s get to know this area a little better.
Okay so this is French Guiana [Bonjour!], it’s a French overseas region located on
the northern coast of South America, between Suriname and Brazil (yes it turns out even
France is going to Brazil), home to around 300,000 people, 65,000 of whom live in the
capital Cayenne, whose name may or may not share the same etymology as the pepper.
The northeastern coast of South America, an area known as the Guianas (Guayanas), was
divided between France, the Netherlands, Britain, Spain, and Portugal.
These respectively became the place we’re talking about today, the independent nations
of Suriname and Guyana, the Guayana Region of Venezuela, and the Brazilian state of Amapá.
While French presences in the area have been recorded as far back as 1503, it was 140 years
later when Cayenne was founded.
The colony of French Guiana would develop as a slave society, with its population mostly
made up of slaves imported from Africa in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
As the French colonial empire began to wane in the Americas– and failing to truly colonize
the area– French Guiana would be developed as a penal colony, with Cayenne’s infamous
Devil’s Island hosting 56,000 prisoners throughout its operation, roughly 1/10 of
whom would actually survive their sentences.
While French Guiana was officially ruled by Vichy France after Paris fell to Germany in
WWII, the colony would come to support Free France in 1943.
In 1946 French Guiana would be transformed from a colony to an overseas region, alongside
Guadeloupe and Martinique.
Now while French Guiana uses the Euro (and is even featured on the designs of the banknotes),
and its residents are French citizens with the same rights and duties of any native-born
Parisian, it is not in the Schengen Area.
However it is still very much part of the European Union, meaning that citizens of non-France
EU countries can still live here as if they were moving to Lyon, but maybe a little bit
further.
This makes it the largest piece of land in the EU outside of Europe (since Greenland
isn’t a part of it) and one of only three of these territories that are not islands,
the other two being Ceuta and Melilla on the North African coast, belonging to Spain…
hmm, why does Spain have entire cities in Africa?
*hint hint, click click* This is all different to overseas territories
or collectivities, like French Polynesia, New Caledonia, or Saint-Pierre and Miquelon,
which are not part of the European Union, make their own laws in most regards, and elect
their own Presidents.
According to the 2019 French census, only about 56% of French Guiana’s population
were actually born in French Guiana, with roughly 10% hailing from Metropolitan France,
and a few more from France’s other overseas territories and departments.
The remaining 30% is made up of groups from all over the place, with Brazilians, Haitians,
Surinamese, Indians, Syrian refugees, and even Chinese and Southeast Asians.
Following France’s decolonization of Southeast Asia, with Communist forces taking over Laos
and the Vietnam War, France would relocate hundreds of Hmong refugees to French Guiana,
resulting in the area still having a sizeable Hmong community to this day.
French Guiana is mainly important to France and Europe as a whole for space reasons.
You see, if you want to go to space you go up 100 kilometers, but you’ll just fall
right back down unless you’re also going sideways, and Earth has some pretty strong
gravity, so you’ll need to be moving at nearly 8 kilometers per second.
You can do this in any direction, but the easiest way to move is eastwards, since you
get a small boost from the Earth’s rotation, and although you still get that boost from
any non-polar latitude, it is the strongest at the equator.
It’s also easier if you put it on the eastern coast of a continent, so that if a rocket
fails in the upper atmosphere, the debris won’t fall over any inhabited areas (China).
Thus, the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, the primary launchpoint for the European Space
Agency, and the closest major launchsite to the equator.
The site was established in 1964 at the request of President Charles de Gaulle, to replace
an older base in the now independent Algeria, and to stimulate the economy of French Guiana.
However, despite its continued importance to the local economy, very few locals actually
work in or for the space center.
Of course, the fact that France and Brazil share a 700 kilometer border is not just a
fun trivia fact to know for Sporcle quizzes, it also means a lot for those on either side
of the border.
Basic necessities can be up to five times as expensive on the French side than the Brazilian
side, however French Guiana is also rich in metals and minerals, the most notable of which
being gold, which has attracted many across the border from the other side, which poses
a serious risk to the region’s rainforests.
These rivers however still serve as a lifeline to the many towns and villages that line their
banks, with most of the population living either along the coastal core of the region,
or along the Oiapoque and Maroni Rivers.
Meanwhile others like Saül can only… oh my god that– how?
What?
… Uh anyway, more inland villages like Saül are only reachable by aircraft.
So as far as roads go, I hope you don’t need roads, because where we’re going…
We don't have roads.
Now of course the real question is… the literal title of this video (uh, unless I’ve
changed it, YouTubers tend to do that a lot if a video’s underperforming).
But anyway, why is French Guiana still a part of France?
Simply put, in a 2010 referendum, 70% of French Guianese voters voted against greater autonomy
from France.
French Guiana’s GDP per capita sits at around 15,000€, which while dismal compared to
Metropolitan France ($44.4k) is still well ahead of neighboring Brazil ($9.67k) and Suriname
($5.56k).
That’s not to say everything is fine in French Guiana just because they’re part
of France, with poor infrastructure, limited access to healthcare, illegal gold mining,
and poor economic prospects for many locals being some of the biggest issues plaguing
the region.
But by all accounts, the region doesn’t want independence, and no one in the area
has any particular desire to have it for themselves.
So whichever way things go in the near future, as long as problems don’t get significantly
worse, it’s very likely that this little chunk of land on the northern trip of Amazonia,
and its 300,000 residents, will remain French for the foreseeable future.
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