ABSTRACT
French activity in the Caribbean can be dated from the 1530s, when privateering flibustiers targeted Spanish vessels. However, France was slow to engage in the colonization of the Caribbean in comparison to its European rivals, hampered by more than half a century of internal strife, the Wars of Religion, from the 1560s. The French began to settle parts of the Caribbean in the early seventeenth century through unofficial efforts or commercial companies. From the start, the French intertwined a mission to Christianize indigenous populations as well as peoples of African descent that they enslaved with their colonization efforts in the Caribbean.
