...and this quiz is about French Empire Geography. Two things wrong with this. 1. I can barely say that that question is geography. 2. This quiz is about the French Empire not France itself.
There are many people of French descent in Louisiana. The term 'Cajun' refers only to some of them, primarily the descendants of those people expelled from Nova Scotia in the 18th century. New Orleanians of French descent would not call themselves Cajuns.
Times have changed. Unlike previous centuries, empires' treatment of people in their colonies are no longer terrible, and being a French citizen means a much better life than a citizen of another Suriname or Guyana.
Colonialism is kind of like that famous Borscht belt joke. "The food tastes terrible ... and such small portions". Colonialism was bad, and it ended too soon. Many countries that became independent after WWII would have been better off had they stayed colonies.
People of French overseas regions are generally inclined to stay French nowadays, because they tend to enjoy far better standards of living than their neighbors, even if, to be fair, it's generally lower than what is called Metropolitan France.
The contrast is particularly striking in French Guiana, as it borders Suriname, one of the poorer countries in South America, and Northern Brazil, the least developed part of the country.
This is not to say that the situation could not be improved, as shown by the massive strikes that took place in the region earlier this year, but the issues they're suffering are either way smaller than in other countries in the area, or could not be resolved in any way by independence, which would cut them a critical lot of subventions to Overseas Territories from Metropolitan France.
The people of French Guiana choose to remain a part of France because they, wisely, saw what happened on the neighboring former Guianas - (Surinam and Guyana) once they became independent.
Does it depend on how we define North America? I certainly wouldn't call Haiti (Saint-Domingue) North American, but quizzes on this site often do. In that case, I doubt that the value of North American furs matched the sugar coming out of the Caribbean. (But I really don't know.)
The JetPunk definition of North America is everything from Panama north and every independent country in the Caribbean. South America is just the landmass itself, from Colombia to Argentina.
Much of what is today Canada was owned by the French at one time, and Montreal was one of the most important cities in the fur trade. The entirety of the Northern part of North America was VERY rich in fur-bearing animals. The history of Canada and the fur trade is quite interesting. Give it a look :)
I'm pretty sure Vanuatu was never formally part of the French Empire, but was jointly administered by Britain and France, originally as a condominium and later as the New Hebrides
That is incorrect, it was a condominium but was never a colony of either France or the United Kingdom. One of the main reasons the country is one of the poorest in the Pacific today is that both European countries heavily exploited the islands but barely invested in creating infrastructure on the islands like roads, airports and port facilities. Most of the infrastructure which exists there today was created during WW2 when the Americans used Vanuatu as a staging area for their struggles with the Japanese in the Solomon Islands at Guadalcanal.
I had no idea what or where Saint Pierre and Miquelon was, but I figured I had enough time to brute force my way through as many countries of the world as I could to guess what's near it. Little did I know the very first country I guessed was the right answer!
The contrast is particularly striking in French Guiana, as it borders Suriname, one of the poorer countries in South America, and Northern Brazil, the least developed part of the country.
This is not to say that the situation could not be improved, as shown by the massive strikes that took place in the region earlier this year, but the issues they're suffering are either way smaller than in other countries in the area, or could not be resolved in any way by independence, which would cut them a critical lot of subventions to Overseas Territories from Metropolitan France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America