France began colonizing the Americas in the 16th century and continued into the following centuries as it established a colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere. France established colonies in much of eastern North America, on several Caribbean islands, and in South America. Most colonies were developed to export products such as fish, rice, sugar, and furs.
Sweden established colonies in the Americas in the mid-17th century, including the colony of New Sweden (1638–1655) on the Delaware River in what is now Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, as well as two possessions in the Caribbean during the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Lesser Antilles is a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea, forming part of the West Indies in Caribbean region of the Americas. They are distinguished from the larger islands of the Greater Antilles to the west. They form an arc which begins east of Puerto Rico at the archipelago of the Virgin Islands, swings southeast through the Leeward and Windward Islands towards South America, and turns westward through the Leeward Antilles along the Venezuelan coast.
The French West Indies or French Antilles are the parts of France located in the Antilles islands of the Caribbean:
This is a list of possessions of Sweden held outside of Sweden proper during the early modern period.
The Swedish slave trade mainly occurred in the early history of Sweden when the trade of thralls was one of the pillars of the Norse economy. During the raids, the Vikings often captured and enslaved militarily weaker peoples they encountered, but took the most slaves in raids of the British Isles, and Slavs in Eastern Europe. This slave trade lasted from the 8th through the 11th centuries. Slavery itself was abolished in Sweden in 1335. A smaller trade of African slaves happened during the 17th and 18th centuries, around the time Swedish overseas colonies were established in North America and in Africa. Similarly to other European powers, slavery was banned in the motherland while being legal in the colonies. Consequently, slavery remained legal on the sole Swedish Caribbean colony of Saint Barthélemy from 1784 until 1847.
Danish overseas colonies and Dano-Norwegian colonies were the colonies that Denmark–Norway possessed from 1536 until 1953. At its apex, the colonies spanned four continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.
The Curonian colonization of the Americas was performed by the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, which was the second-smallest state to colonise the Americas, after the Knights of Malta. It had a colony on the island of Tobago from 1654 to 1659 and intermittently from 1660 to 1689.
A colonial empire is a collective of territories, either contiguous with the imperial center or located overseas, settled by the population of a certain state and governed by that state.
The Danish Gold Coast comprised the colonies that Denmark–Norway controlled in Africa as a part of the Gold Coast, which is on the Gulf of Guinea. It was colonized by the Dano-Norwegian fleet, first under indirect rule by the Danish West India Company, later as a crown colony of the kingdom of Denmark-Norway. The area under Danish influence was over 10,000 square kilometres.
The Swedish Gold Coast was a colony of the Swedish Africa Company founded in 1650 by Hendrik Carloff on the Gulf of Guinea in present-day Ghana in Africa. Under foreign occupation for much of its existence, it disappeared for good in April 1663 when it became part of the Dutch Gold Coast.
Gustavia is the main town and capital of the island of Saint Barthélemy. Originally called Le Carénage, it was renamed in honor of King Gustav III of Sweden.
Nordic colonialism is a subdivision within broader colonial studies that discusses the role of Nordic nations in achieving economic benefits from outside of their own cultural sphere. The field ranges from studying the Sámi in relation to the Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish states, to activities of the Danish Colonial Empire and Swedish Empire in Africa, New Sweden, and on Caribbean islands such as St. Thomas and Saint-Barthélemy.
The Gold Coast was the name for a region on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa that was rich in gold, petroleum, sweet crude oil and natural gas. This former region is now known as the country Ghana.
This is a timeline of the territorial evolution of the Caribbean and nearby areas of North, Central, and South America, listing each change to the internal and external borders of the various countries that make up the region.
Saint Barthélemy, officially the Collectivité territoriale de Saint-Barthélemy, also known as St Barts (English) or St. Barth (French), is an overseas collectivity of France in the Caribbean. The island lies about 30 kilometres (19 mi) southeast of the island of Saint Martin; it is northeast of the Dutch islands of Saba and Sint Eustatius, as well as north of the independent country of Saint Kitts and Nevis.
The English overseas possessions comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonised, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the Kingdom of England before 1707.
