Saint Pierre and Miquelon

Saint Pierre and Miquelon is a French overseas collectivity of eight islands off the south coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The town of Saint-Pierre is the capital, French is spoken, and the islands lie only 19 km (12 mi) from the Burin Peninsula of Newfoundland.

Indigenous peoples came in seasonal waves from about 3000 BCE to 1500 CE to hunt and to quarry rhyolite for tools, without settling for good. The Portuguese explorer João Álvares Fagundes landed on 21 October 1520, and Jacques Cartier claimed the islands for France in 1536. Basque and Breton fishermen used them long before a handful of permanent settlers arrived late in the 17th century. France ceded them to Britain in the Peace of Utrecht of 1713 and got them back in the Treaty of Paris of 1763, the only part of New France it kept.

Britain held the islands during the wars with revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and the French returned for good in 1816. Settlers from Brittany, Normandy and the Basque Country rebuilt the colony around the cod fishery. During Prohibition in the United States from 1920 the islands traded in alcohol. On 24 December 1941 Free French forces took the islands from the Vichy administration despite objections from Canada, Britain and the United States.

Saint Pierre and Miquelon became a French overseas territory in 1946 and has its own status within France, electing a deputy to the National Assembly. Its residents are European Union citizens and use the euro, although the islands lie outside the Schengen area. A 1992 decision fixed the maritime boundary with Canada, and the economy, built on fishing and on servicing fishing fleets off Newfoundland, has become smaller. Harsh weather and soil of peat and clay limit farming to a few weeks each year.