16.1.6 to 16.1.9

In 1699, French territorial claims in North America expanded still further with the foundation of Louisiana in the basin of Mississippi River. The extensive trading network throughout the region connected to Canada through the Great Lakes and was maintained through a vast system of fortifications, much of them centered in the Illinois Country and in present-day Arkansas. As the French empire in North America expanded, the French also began to build a smaller, but more profitable empire in the West Indies. Settlement along the South American coast in what is today French Guiana began in 1624, and a colony was founded on Saint Kitts in 1627 (the island had to be shared with the English until the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, when it was ceded outright). The Compagnie des �les de l'Amérique founded colonies in Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1635, and a colony was later founded on Saint Lucia (1650). The food plantations of these colonies were built and sustained by slavery from the abduction of slaves from Africa. Local Resistance by the indigenous peoples resulted in the Carib Expulsion of 1660. The most important Caribbean colonial possession did not come until 1664, when the colony of Saint-Domingue (today's Haiti) was founded on the western half of the Spanish island of Hispaniola. In the 18th century, Saint-Domingue grew to be the richest sugar colony in the Caribbean. The eastern half of Hispaniola also came under French rule for a short period, after being given to France by Spain shortly after the loss of Saint-Domingue to France by the Haitian Revolution. French colonial expansion was not limited to the New World, however. In Senegal in West Africa, the French began to establish trading posts along the coast in 1624. In 1664 the French East India Company was established to compete for trade in the east. Colonies were established in India in Chandernagore in Bengal (1673) and Pondicherry in the Southeast (1674), and later at Yanam (1723), Mahe (1725), and Karikal (1739) (see French India). Colonies were also founded in the Indian Ocean, on the Île de Bourbon (Réunion, 1664), Île Royale (Mauritius, 1718), and the Seychelles (1756). During Napoleon's early career, Egypt was also conquered for a brief period, but French rule there only extended to the immediate area around the Nile.