Saint Pierre and Miquelon

Saint Pierre and Miquelon is a group of eight islands covering 242 square kilometres in the northwestern Atlantic, off the Canadian island of Newfoundland, that has remained French while all around it North America became British and then Canadian. Claimed for France by Jacques Cartier in 1536 and annexed during Jean Talon's intendancy of New France in 1670, the islands were ceded to Britain at the 1713 Peace of Utrecht, returned by the 1763 Treaty of Paris, occupied and burned again in 1778 and 1793, handed back by the 1802 Treaty of Amiens, retaken after the Napoleonic Wars resumed, and finally returned to France by the 1814 Treaty of Paris — the start of the period shown on the map, after which French rule was never again interrupted except by a brief British occupation during the Hundred Days of 1815. When the French returned in 1816 they found every settlement destroyed, and the islands were gradually resettled by Breton, Norman and Basque settlers alongside newcomers from Newfoundland. The colony lived on the cod fishery of the nearby Grand Banks, and its economy did not recover for another 35 years. Its capital, Saint-Pierre, sits on the small island of that name; the larger Miquelon lies to its north-west.