France – Trinidad and Tobago relations
Encyclopedia
Bilateral relations between the countries France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, lying just off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles...

 have existed for about two hundred years. Currently, France has an embassy in Port of Spain
Port of Spain
Port of Spain, also written as Port-of-Spain, is the capital of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and the country's third-largest municipality, after San Fernando and Chaguanas. The city has a municipal population of 49,031 , a metropolitan population of 128,026 and a transient daily population...

. Trinidad and Tobago is represented in France through its embassy in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

 (Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

). Trinidad and Tobago also has bilateral investment agreements with France.

Colonial history

France had colonized Tobago during the seventeenth century. France occupied the colony from August 1666 to March 1667. On 6 December 1677, the French destroyed the Dutch colony and claimed the entire island before restoring it to the Dutch by the first Treaty of Nijmegen
Treaties of Nijmegen
The Treaties of Peace of Nijmegen were a series of treaties signed in the Dutch city of Nijmegen between August 1678 and December 1679...

 on 10 August 1678. In 1751, the French settled colonists on the island, but ceded it to Britain in the Treaty of Paris
Treaty of Paris (1763)
The Treaty of Paris, often called the Peace of Paris, or the Treaty of 1763, was signed on 10 February 1763, by the kingdoms of Great Britain, France and Spain, with Portugal in agreement. It ended the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War...

 of 10 February 1763. Nevertheless, most "of the settlers were French, and French influence became dominant." It was again a French colony from 2 June 1781 to 15 April 1793, nominally part of the Lucie département of France from 25 October 1797 to 19 April 1801, and once again a French colony from 30 June 1802 to 30 June 1803.

Cultural legacy

By the later 1790s, the white upper class on Trinidad "consisted mainly of French creoles," which created "a powerful French cultural influence in Trinidad. This was expressed not only in the widespread use of French patois...but also in the general population's enthusiasm for the Catholic tradition of Carnival." Sean Sheehan explains further that for "about a hundred years, the language spoken in Trinidad and Tobago was a pidgin form of French, which was basically French with Twi or Yoruba words included. Even today, there is a strong element of French in Trini, and in some rural areas, people speak a language that is closer to French than to English."

Notable modern interactions

In 1964 and 1965, France agreed for air services with Trinidad and Tobago.

External links

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