The French occupied, founded, and settled at least fourteen colonies in the Americas during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They were located in two broad climatic zones: tropical and temperate. The tropical colonies, founded only after Europeans had commercialised the idea of colonisation, were intended for settlement. All but one of the southern group were islands in the West Indies. The exception was Cayenne, or French Guiana, which along with similar English and Dutch possessions was located between the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers on the northeast coast of South America. The northern colonies were colonies of trade or industry. Four or five, depending on how one counts them, were located in the semitropical and temperate zones of North America. Only war appears to have given the colonies any kind of unity. Whether they achieved a more permanent unity is the subject of this book.

Eight of the island colonies were scattered along the sweeping thousandkilometre arc of the Lesser Antilles, known as les Isles du vent or the Windward Islands: Grenada, Martinique, Marie Galante, Guadeloupe, Saint-Christophe, Saint-Barthélémy, Saint-Martin, and Sainte-Croix. The colony of Saint-Domingue, which occupied the western third of the island of Hispaniola, was in the Greater Antilles, called les Isles sous le vent or the Leeward Islands. Louisiana and Canada were located along the lower valleys of North America's greatest rivers, the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, while Acadia, Placentia, and Île Royale were in the northeast maritime region.