Non-fiction — Saint Pierre & Miquelon

St. Pierre and Miquelon: A Fragment of France in North America

Jean-Pierre Andrieux is a historian who has written extensively on Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the small French archipelago sitting just off the south coast of Newfoundland, Canada — the last remaining piece of the once-vast territory of New France still held by France in North America. This 1983 book, published by W.F. Rannie and distributed by Overseas Trading Co., runs 96 pages and is catalogued under the Open Library subjects "Saint Pierre and Miquelon -- History" and "Saint Pierre and Miquelon -- Description and travel," combining a historical account of the islands with a general description of their geography and way of life. Saint Pierre and Miquelon has a distinctive history among French overseas territories: settled by Basque and Breton fishermen for its rich cod-fishing grounds, it changed hands between France and Britain multiple times before France, and later became internationally notorious during the United States' Prohibition era (1920-1933), when the islands served as a major transshipment point for alcohol smuggled into the US mainland — a period Andrieux is also known for documenting in his other work. The islands remain French territory today, using the euro and electing representatives to the French National Assembly, making them a genuine outpost of Metropolitan France a few kilometers from the Canadian coast.