Overview

Saint Pierre and Miquelon is a French archipelago off the east coast of Canada, south of the Canadian island of Newfoundland, in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is a territory with two main islands, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, three peninsulas linked by two tombolos, and several smaller islands and islets.

It is a French collectivity, meaning that its citizens are French. Still, the island has local political powers, with a deliberative assembly called the Conseil territorial de Saint-Pierre et Miquelon.
The archipelago has two communes, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon-Langlade.

Although its surface area of 242 km² (93 sq. mi.) makes it one of the smallest French territories, and its population of over 5,800 is one of the least populated, Saint-Pierre et Miquelon offers France a strategic presence in North America.

History

After being "discovered" by Europeans in the late 15th or early 16th century, the archipelago was colonized by Jacques Cartier, a French sailor who took possession of the island in 1536. The island served as a base for Brittany, Normandy, and the Basque Country fishermen who fished for whales and cod, the staple diet of slaves in the Caribbean islands. After various changes of ownership between the French and the English, the archipelago was entirely devastated, and its inhabitants were deported. Saint Pierre and Miquelon became definitively French in June 1816, following the 1815 Treaty of Paris, which ceded the archipelago back to France.

Rivalries abounded, as fishing was the main source of wealth for the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. They were granted a fishing area. 

With Prohibition in the USA banning the sale, production and consumption of alcohol in the country, the Saint Pierre and Miquelon archipelago experienced an economic boom, becoming a smuggling center for the USA.

In 1946, the archipelago became a French Overseas Territory, then 30 years later a French Overseas Department, but this new status, which tied Saint-Pierre et Miquelon even more closely to France, was poorly received on the island that was traded more with Canada than with mainland France, more than 500 km away.

In June 1985, the archipelago became a territorial collectivity of the French Republic, giving it fiscal and customs autonomy and greater local political powers.

Fishing, which used to be the leading sector in terms of employment, has been relegated to the background following negotiations with Canada, which have reduced fishing resources. The service sector, notably trade and tourism, now dominates in the archipelago.