Overseas departments and regions of France

Since March 2011, the five overseas departments and regions of France are:

• French Guiana in South America, a part of The Guianas;
• Guadeloupe in the Caribbean Sea, a part of the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles;
• Martinique in the Caribbean Sea, a part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles;
• Mayotte in the Mozambique Channel, a part of the Comoro Islands;
• Réunion in the Indian Ocean, a part of the Mascarene Islands.

French Guiana, Martinique, and Mayotte are single territorial collectivities, and so (along with Corsica) have a single government that operates as both a region and a department. Guadeloupe and Réunion have separate regional and departmental governments that cover the same territory.

Other parts of Overseas France have more autonomy, namely the overseas collectivities and New Caledonia.

History

France's earliest, short-lived attempt at setting up overseas departments was after Napoleon's conquest of the Republic of Venice in 1797, when the hitherto Venetian Ionian Islands fell to the French Directory and were organised as the departments of Mer-Égée, Ithaque and Corcyre. In 1798, the Russian Admiral Fyodor Ushakov evicted the French from these islands, and though France regained them via the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, the three departments were not revived.

Under the 1946 constitution of the Fourth Republic, the French colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean; French Guiana in South America; and Réunion in the Indian Ocean were defined as overseas departments, joining Algeria in North Africa, which had previously been divided into three departments and a territory in 1848.

Since 1982, following the French government's policy of decentralization, overseas departments have elected regional councils with powers similar to those of the regions of metropolitan France. As a result of a constitutional revision that occurred in 2003, these regions are now to be called "overseas regions"; indeed, the new wording of the Constitution gives no precedence to the terms "overseas department" or "overseas region", though the latter is still virtually unused by the French media.

The overseas collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon was an overseas department from 1976 to 1985. All five of France's overseas departments have between 200,000 and 1,000,000 people each, whereas Saint Pierre and Miquelon has only about 6,000, and the smaller collectivity unit therefore seemed more appropriate for the islands.

The overseas collectivity of Mayotte held a referendum on 29 March 2009. Of the votes, 95% were for becoming an overseas department. Mayotte became an overseas department on 31 March 2011.