Indeed, He Completed Arrangements For The Sale
Even Before Monroe Arrived.
Some efforts had also been made, at Bonaparte's instance, to induce Spain
to give up the Floridas, East and West, but European complications
prevented the exertion of pressure in this direction; and the whole of
Florida became part of the United States by treaty signed in 1819.
The
sale of Louisiana lowered the French flag on the only remaining portion
of American territory that acknowledged the tricolour, except the
pestilential fragment of French Guiana, on the north-east of South
America, where France has had a footing since the beginning of the
seventeenth century, save for a short interval (1809 to 1815) when it was
taken by the British and Portuguese. But the possession has never been a
profitable one, and a contemporary writer, quoting an official
publication, describes it as enjoying "neither agriculture, commerce, nor
industry."* (* Fallot, L'Avenir Colonial de la France (1903) page 237.)
In the West Indies, France had lost Martinique and Guadeloupe during the
naval wars prior to Bonaparte's ascension to supreme authority. These
islands were restored to her under the Treaty of Amiens; were once more
captured by the British in 1809 to 1810; and were finally handed back to
France under the Treaty of Paris in 1814. Tobago and St. Lucia, taken
from France in 1803, were not restored.
The large island of San Domingo (the present republic of Haiti, the
Espanola of Columbus, and the first seat of European colonisation in the
west) had been occupied by French, Spanish, and British planters prior to
1796.
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