French India
French
India is a general name for
the French establishments set up by the French East India Company in India from the
second half of the 17th century onward, and officially known as the Établissements
français dans l'Inde from the resumption of French rule in 1816 to their de
facto incorporation into the Union of India in 1947 and 1954. They included Pondichéry,
Karikal and Yanaon on the Coromandel Coast, Mahé on the Malabar Coast, and Chandernagor
in Bengal. French India also included several loges
(subsidiary trading stations that all European East India
companies maintained in a number of Indian towns), but after 1816 these were to
be nominally French only.
The total area amounted to
510 km2, of which 293 km2 belonged to the territory of Pondichéry. In 1936, the population of
the colony totaled 298,851 inhabitants, of which 63% (187,870) lived in the territory of Pondichéry.[
