France in the Amazon — a Creole-French capital between jungle and sea where Devil's Island's penal past meets the European Space Agency's rocket launches at Kourou
Cayenne is the capital of French Guiana — a French overseas department on the north Atlantic coast of South America, with a population of 65,000 in the city and 300,000 across the territory. It is simultaneously the most geographically French city in continental South America (legally part of France, using the euro, represented in the French parliament) and one of the most biologically diverse: the territory is 90% equatorial rainforest, and the Guiana Amazonian Park (3.4 million ha) is the largest national park in the European Union by area. The Guiana Space Centre at Kourou, 60km west of Ca…
French Guiana was first claimed by France in 1604 and is one of the oldest French colonial territories. The territory became internationally notorious as the site of the French penal colony system (1852–1953) — a network of prisons and work camps that processed 80,000 convicts, with high death rates from tropical disease. The offshore prison on Île du Diable (Devil's Island) became the focus of the 1894 Dreyfus Affair, in which Jewish French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus was unjustly convicted of treason and imprisoned there — his case, championed by Émile Zola's 'J'accuse...!' open letter of 1…