The islands are
situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence near the entrance of Fortune Bay, which
extends into the southwestern coast of Newfoundland, near the Grand Banks of
Newfoundland. They are 3.819 km from Brest, the nearest point in Metropolitan
France, and 25 km from the Burin Peninsula of Newfoundland.
The Portuguese
explorer João Álvares Fagundes is thought to be have been the first European to
have landed on the islands; he visited them on 21 October 1520. They were made
a French possession in 1536 by Jacques Cartier on behalf of the King of France.
The islands were not permanently settled until the end of the 17th century. In
1670 a French officer annexed the islands when he found a dozen French fishermen
camped there. The British Royal Navy soon began to harass the French settlers,
pillaging their camps and ships. By the early 1700s, the islands were again
uninhabited, and were ceded to the British by the Treaty of Utrecht which ended
the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713.] The British renamed St Pierre to
'St Peter', and small numbers of British and American settlers began arriving.
Under the terms
of the Treaty of Paris (1763), which put an end to the Seven Years' War, France
ceded all its North American possessions, but Saint-Pierre and Miquelon were
returned to France. With France being allied with the Americans during the
American Revolutionary War, Britain invaded and razed the colony in 1778,
sending the entire population of 2.000 back to France. The Treaty of Amiens of
1802 returned the islands to France, but Britain reoccupied them when
hostilities recommenced the next year.
The Treaty of
Paris (1814) gave them back to France, though Britain occupied them yet again
during the Hundred Days War. The islands were resettled in 1816. The settlers were
mostly Basques, Bretons and Normans, who were joined by various other peoples,
particularly from the nearby island of Newfoundland. Only around the middle of
the century did increased fishing bring a certain prosperity to the little
colony.
Smuggling had
always been an important economic activity in the islands, but it became
especially prominent in the 1920s with the institution of prohibition in the
United States. The end of prohibition in 1933 plunged the islands once more
into economic depression.
During World War
II, despite opposition from Canada, Britain, and the United States, Charles de
Gaulle seized the archipelago from Vichy France, to which the local government
had pledged its allegiance. In a referendum the following day, the population
endorsed the takeover by Free France. After the 1958 French constitutional
referendum, Saint Pierre and Miquelon was given the option of becoming fully
integrated with France, becoming a self-governing state within the French
Community, or preserving the status of overseas territory; it decided to remain
a territory.
I sent an envelope
to Saint Pierre post office. I used some stamps I bought through the website of
the French Post. It took one and a half months to get back home, but with a
very nice postmark.
Stamps from Saint
Pierre and Miquelon can be bought through the website of La Poste: laposte.fr/st-pierre-et-miquelon.
Date sent: 17
April 2017
Date postmark: 22
May 2017
Date received: 1
June 2017
Number of days: 45
Envelope in
collection: 134
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