French people

The French (French: les Français), or the French people, who have French nationality most of them are native from Metropolitan France, in Western Europe. Other are born in Oversea departements or Oversea territories, or in former French colonies.

Diaspora

There is a sizeable French diaspora in the Western Hemisphere. The Canadian province of Quebec is the center of French life on the Western side of the Atlantic. It is home to the oldest French diaspora community and to vibrant French-language arts, media, and learning. There are sizeable French-Canadian communities scattered throughout the other provinces of Canada, particularly in Ontario and New Brunswick.

Related Topics:
Western Hemisphere - Quebec - French-Canadian - Ontario - New Brunswick

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The United States is home to millions of people of French descent, particularly in Louisiana and New England. The French community in Louisiana consists of the Creoles, the descendants of the French settlers who arrived when Louisiana was a French colony, and the Cajuns, the descendants of Acadian refugees from the Great Upheaval. In New England, the vast majority of ethnic French immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries came not from France, but from over the border in Quebec. These French Canadians arrived to work in the timber mills and textile plants that were spring up throughout the region as it industrialized. Today, nearly 25% of the population of New Hampshire is of French ancestry, the highest of any state.

Related Topics:
United States - Louisiana - New England - Creoles - Cajuns - Acadian - Great Upheaval - New Hampshire

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It is worth noting that the English and Dutch colonies of pre-Revolutionary America attracted large numbers of French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in France. In the Dutch colony that later became New York and northeastern New Jersey, these French Huguenots, nearly identical in religion to the Dutch Reformed Church, assimilated almost completely into the Dutch community. However large it may have been at one time, it has lost all identity of its French origin, often with the translation of names (examples: de la Montagne > Vandenberg by translation; de Vaux > DeVos or Devoe by phonetic respelling). Huguenots appeared in all of the English colonies and likewise assimilated. Even though this mass settlement approached the size of the settlement of the French settlement of Québec, it has become heavily diluted and has left little trace of any cultural influence. New Rochelle, New York is named after La Rochelle, France, one of the sources of Huguenot emigration to the Dutch colony; and New Paltz, New York, is one of the few non-urban settlements of Huguenots that did not undergo massive recycling of buildings in the usual redevelopment of such older, larger cities as New York City or New Rochelle.

Related Topics:
Huguenots - Dutch Reformed Church - New Rochelle, New York - La Rochelle - New Paltz, New York

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Elsewhere in the Americas, the majority of the French diaspora in South America can found in Argentina and Chile, and there is a sizeable population of French people (whether natives of Metropolitan France or descendants of such) in the French Caribbean.

Related Topics:
Argentina - Chile - French Caribbean

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