French rule in India

French establishments in India
Établissements français dans l'Inde
French colony
1668–1954
French India after 1815
Capital		Pondichéry
Languages		French, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali
Political structure		Colony
Head of state
•	King (1769–1774)	Louis XV of France
•	President (1954)	René Coty
Commissioner
•	1673	François Caron (first)
•	1693	François Martin (last)
High Commissioner
•	1947–1949	Charles François Marie Baron (first)
•	1954	Georges Escargueil (last)
Historical era		Imperialism
•	First French East India Company Commissioner of Surat	1668
•	De facto transfer	1 November 1954
Area
•	1948	508.03 km2 (196.15 sq mi)
Population
•	1929 est.	288,546
•	1948 est.	332,045
Currency		French Indian Rupee
Preceded by Succeeded by French East India Company Puducherry Chandannagar
Today part of		India

Colonial India

Imperial entities of India
Dutch India	1605–1825
Danish India	1620–1869
French India	1668–1954
Portuguese India (1505–1961)
Casa da Índia	1434–1833
Portuguese East India Company	1628–1633
British India (1612–1947)
East India Company	1612–1757
Company rule in India	1757–1858
British Raj	1858–1947
British rule in Burma	1824–1948
Princely states	1721–1949
Partition of India	1947

French India, formally the Établissements français dans l'Inde ("French establishments in India"), was a French colony comprising geographically separate enclaves on the Indian subcontinent. The possessions were originally acquired by the French East India Company beginning in the second half of the 17th century, and were de facto incorporated into the Union of India in 1950 and 1954. The French establishments included Pondichéry, Karikal and Yanaon on the Coromandel Coast, Mahé on the Malabar Coast and Chandernagor in Bengal. French India also included several loges ("lodges", subsidiary trading stations) in other towns, but after 1816, the loges had little commercial importance and the towns to which they were attached came under British administration.

By 1950, the total area measured 510 km² (200 sq mi), of which 293 km² (113 sq mi) belonged to the territory of Pondichéry. In 1936, the population of the colony totalled 298,851 inhabitants, of which 63% (187,870) lived in the territory of Pondichéry.

France was the last of the major European maritime powers of the 17th century to enter the East India trade. Six decades after the foundation of the English and Dutch East India companies (in 1600 and 1602 respectively), and at a time when both companies were multiplying factories on the shores of India, the French still did not have a viable trading company or a single permanent establishment in the East.

Historians have sought to explain France's late entrance in the East India trade. They cite geopolitical circumstances such as the inland position of the French capital, the size of the country itself as the largest and most populated European country, its pre-existing prosperity, France's numerous internal customs barriers and parochial perspectives of merchants on France's Atlantic coast, who had little appetite for the large-scale investment required to develop a viable trading enterprise with the distant East Indies, while French have been developing settlements in North American New France (Canada, Acadia and Louisiana) since 1534.