True, if impolite

Perhaps some of the problem is the possibility they attempted to civilise people who are fundamentaly un-civiliseable. Us Brits did too – look at Pakistan…..Palestine…..Ireland……

I’d take Martinique over Jamaica or Reunion over Pakistan. Addolf is right, sort of. Martinique and Reunion must constitute … er … nearly 0.5% of the total land mass / population of the ex French empire.

That place from Death in Paradise is French, strikes me as even more dangerous than Midsomer.

After France entered the American Revolutionary War on the side of the United States and declared war on Britain, a British force invaded Saint Pierre and Miquelon and briefly occupied them, destroying all colonial settlements on the islands and deporting 2,000 colonists back to France.

In 1793, during the French Revolutionary Wars, another British force landed in Saint Pierre and, in the following year, again deporting the French colonial population, and tried to establish a community of Anglophone settlers.

The nascent British colony was in turn attacked by the French Navy in 1796.

The Treaty of Amiens of 1802 returned the islands to France, but Britain reoccupied them when hostilities recommenced the next year.

The 1814 Treaty of Paris gave the islands back to France, though the UK occupied them yet again during the Hundred Days War in 1815.

France then reclaimed the now uninhabited islands, in which all structures and buildings had been destroyed or fallen into disrepair.

The islands were resettled in 1816. The settlers, mostly Basques, Bretons and Normans, were joined by various other peoples, particularly from the nearby island of Newfoundland.

Quite the colonial hokey-cokey.

Of course it’s the best thing that ever happened to Australia.

Of course it’s the best thing that ever happened to Australia. It means @Boganboy is there instead of here.

…and the average IQ in both countries has risen!

How’s that for a double win!

Thank you JG!!!

Slightly more to the point, I’d argue that the abos had an excellent means of discouraging invaders—–oops asylum seekers.

Since the abos were hunter-gatherers, when the invaders landed, all they had to eat was witchetty grubs, and they had to find these for themselves. This meant the coloniser had to provide huge subsidies until agriculture could be established and the convicts—-oops immigrants could feed themselves.

As for the Brits seizing the lot, Oz was a substitute for the US as a place for dumping the convicts. And after the US revolted, the Brits had endless troubles with the aggressive Yankee imperialists trying to grab Canada. So the UK didn’t want to repeat its error of having a land border with anyone else at all.

They also had problems with the local settlers who wanted to be allocated convicts as free labour, with the government paying for their support. So there was an incentive to establish a new convict settlement when the problems in the old one became too acute.

Of course towards the end of the 19th century, Britain’s naval supremacy was diminishing. So the Germans were alas permitted to seize the north east of New Guinea. To the disgust of we Aussies.

But by that time, British sovereignty over the mainland of Oz was established. Though one suspects that those abos still wandering through the spinifex looking for a rabbit or a kangaroo to bash on the head might have disagreed.

We thus were in a position to develop the perfect society. Which we had when I was a boy. But unfortunately imbecilic innovators have now introduced all these horrid changes. Culminating in the appalling idiocy of the Greens.

I don’t think the dukes of Normandy swore allegiance to the French crown until around 1200.

Give me William the bastard any day over macron the cunt.

What I know about Saint Pierre and Miquelon is that they negotiated a maritime exclusive economic area with Canada, but drew it wrong so it a) goes in the wrong direction and b) finishes 50 miles short of the high seas, so it is, appropriately French, a cul-de-sac.

@Pouncer
If you look on Google Earth, the dividing line between the two vegetation regimes is actually the frontier. It’s not as if Haitians got the short end of the stick with their end of the island.
Opinion of a Dominica when asked how things were back home at the time of the Haitian earthquake; (in Spanish) “How should I know. That was in Haiti. Never been there. They’re all animals over there.”
On the other hand, from someone was in Haiti after the earthquake when the NGOs turned up.
“Bloody awful here. Can’t get a decent hotel room, a table in a good restaurant or an attractive hooker for love nor money. They’ve taken over everything.”

France is nice for a holiday, enjoying the sunshine, wine and cheese, but you’d have to be crazy (as a Brit) to want to live their long term.

A Year in Provence?

I’d rather spend 12 months breaking rocks in Wormwood Scrubs.

I recall a friend from Singapore being surprised at how familiar the average Briton was with the history of the Malayan Emergency until someone explained to him that it was remembered, not because the British had won, but because the French had lost in Vietnam.