Almost three thousand miles west of France lie eight islands with a population today of 5,500 people and terrain not unlike the Falkland Islands. The similarity does not end there; both were recaptured in the 20th century.
I must digress. In 2015 I was invited to the Naval Museum in Madrid and saw Juan de la Cosa’s mappa mundi dating from circa 1500. It is the first depiction of St Pierre and Miquelon, an archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland. It is a delightful anomaly in today’s world that flies well below the radar (unlike the Falklands). Part of the EU, using the Euro, their French citizens elect a deputy to attend the National Assembly in Paris. On average a deputy represents a constituency of about 100,000 so St P et M get a big bang for their euro. It is near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland; somewhere I only recently found out about in a Maigret novel: The Grand Banks Café (1931). To look into whether the French islanders are governed by EU fishing rules is a digression too far, but I guess not.
The islands were bagged by the French in 1536 but only inhabited towards the end of the 17th century. However, as part of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) they were ceded to Britain – a status that lasted until the 1814 Treaty of Paris. The economy relied, unsurprisingly, on fishing and smuggling. The latter got a great boost from Prohibition. They sent a disproportionate number of men to fight in both World Wars. About 500 served in each war, four hundred losing their lives in WW I and twenty-seven in WW II.
When France fell to Hitler the islands sided with the Vichy government and this is why they came to my attention. On Christmas Eve 1941 the Free French took them – rather easily and without bloodshed – a small coup for de Gaulle that features in the new, long, two part bio-pic. It was not a pointless piece of propaganda. The Allies feared its powerful radio transmitter and transatlantic cables could be used to pass weather reports and Allied convoy movements to German U-boats. De Gaulle feared the United States and Canada might neutralise the islands under an agreement with Vichy, so ordered Vice Admiral Musilier to act independently, bypassing Allied approval and infuriating the American government, flouting the Monroe Doctrine as well as the agreement with Vichy France. Despite the diplomatic storm, the action proved a vital turning point that forced Washington and Ottawa to recognize de Gaulle’s movement as a legitimate sovereign power.
The islands remain part of France with a peculiar, rather Gallic, status as a self-governing overseas collectivity, whatever that means.