Guadeloupe (French pronunciation: [ɡwadəlup]; English: /ɡwɑːdəˈluːp/; Antillean Creole: Gwadloup) is an archipelago located in the Leeward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles, with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres (629 sq. mi) and a population of 400,000. It is the first overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. As with the other overseas departments, Guadeloupe is also an integral part of the Republic. Besides the eponymous main island of Guadeloupe, other smaller islands in the archipelago include Marie-Galante, La Désirade and the les Saintes archipelago.

As part of France, Guadeloupe is part of the European Union; hence, as for most EU countries, its currency is the euro. However, Guadeloupe is not part of the Schengen Area. The prefecture and the capital of Guadeloupe is Basse-Terre. Christopher Columbus named the island Santa María de Guadalupe in 1493 after the Virgin Mary, venerated in the Spanish town of Guadalupe, in Extremadura.

During his second trip to America, seeking fresh water in November 1493, Christopher Columbus became the first European to land on Guadeloupe. He called it Santa María de Guadalupe de Extremadura, after the image of the Virgin Mary venerated at the Spanish monastery of Villuercas, in Guadalupe, Extremadura. The expedition set ashore just south of Capesterre and did not leave any settlers ashore.

Christopher Columbus is credited with discovering the pineapple on the island of Guadeloupe in 1493, although the fruit had long been grown in South America. He called it piña de Indias, meaning "pine of Indies."

After successful settlement on the island of St Christophe (St Kitts), the French Company of the American Islands delegated Charles Lienard and Jean Duplessis, Lord of Ossonville to colonize one or any of the region’s islands, Guadeloupe, Martinique or Dominica. Due to Martinique’s inhospitable nature, the duo resolved to settle in Guadeloupe in 1635, took possession of the island, and wiped out many of the Carib Amerindians. It was annexed to the kingdom of France in 1674.

Over the next century, the island was seized several times by the British. The economy benefited from the lucrative sugar trade introduced during the closing decades of the seventeenth century. One indication of Guadeloupe's prosperity at this time is that in the Treaty of Paris (1763), France, defeated in war, again, agreed to abandon its territorial claims in Canada if the British returned Guadeloupe, which was captured in 1759.

In 1790, following the outbreak of the French Revolution, the upper classes of Guadeloupe refused to obey the new laws of equal rights for the free colored. They attempted to declare independence, causing a fire to break out in Pointe-à-Pitre that devastated a third of the town. A struggle between the monarchists (who wanted independence) and the republicans (who were faithful to revolutionary France) ensued. It ended with a victory by the monarchists, who declared independence in 1791. The monarchists refused to receive the new governor appointed by Paris in 1792. In 1793, a slave rebellion started, which made the upper classes turn to the British and ask them to occupy the island.

In an effort to take advantage of the chaos ensuing from the French Revolution, Britain attempted to seize Guadeloupe in 1794 and held it from 21 April until December 1794, when Victor Hugues obliged the English general to surrender. Hugues succeeded in freeing the slaves. They revolted and turned on the slave owners who controlled the sugar plantations. In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte issued the Law of 20 May 1802. It restored slavery to all of the colonies captured by the British during the French Revolutionary Wars, but this did not apply to certain French overseas possessions such as Guadeloupe, Guyane, and Saint-Domingue. Napoleon sent an expeditionary force to recapture the island from the rebellious Mulattos.Louis Delgrès and a group of revolutionary soldiers killed themselves on the slopes of the Matouba volcano when it became obvious that the invading troops would take control of the island. The occupation force killed approximately 10,000 Guadeloupeans.

On 4 February 1810 the British once again seized the island and continued to occupy it until 1816. By the Anglo-Swedish alliance of 3 March 1813, it was ceded to Sweden for a brief period of 15 months. The British administration continued in place and British governors continued to govern the Island.

By the Treaty of Paris of 1814 Sweden ceded Guadeloupe once more to France. An ensuing settlement between Sweden and the British gave rise to the Guadeloupe Fund. French control of Guadeloupe was definitively acknowledged in the Treaty of Vienna in 1815. Slavery was abolished on the island on 22 July 1804 at the initiative of Victor Schoelcher. Guadeloupe lost 12,000 of its 150,000 residents in the cholera epidemic of 1865–66. In 1946 the colony of Guadeloupe became an overseas department of France, and in 1974 it became an administrative center. Its deputies sit in the French National Assembly in Paris.

Today the population of Guadeloupe is mainly of African or mixed descent and largely Roman Catholic. French and a Creole patois with an important European and Indian active population. There are also Lebanese, Syrians, Chinese and others, for example Carib Amerindians.

On 15 July 2007 the island communes of Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy were officially detached from Guadeloupe and became two separate French overseas collectivities with their own local administration. Their combined population was 35,930 and their combined land area was 74.2 km (29 sq mi) at the 1999 census. Guadeloupe thereby lost 8.5 percent of its population and 4.4 percent of its land area.

On 20 January 2009, an umbrella group of approximately fifty labour union and other associations known in the local Antillean Creole as the Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon (LKP) led by Élie Domota called for a €200 ($260 USD) monthly pay increase for the island's low income workers. The protesters have proposed that authorities "lower business taxes as a top up to company finances" to pay for the €200 pay raises. Employers and business leaders in Guadeloupe have said that they cannot afford the salary increase. The strike lasted for 44 days, until an accord was reached on March 5, 2009. Tourism suffered greatly during this time and has affected the 2010 tourist season as well.

Guadeloupe's culture is probably best known for the islanders' literary achievements, particularly the poetry of Saint-John Perse, the pseudonym used by Alexis Léger. Perse won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the soaring flight and the evocative images of his poetry, which, in a visionary fashion, reflects the conditions of our time.

Guadeloupe has always had a rich literary production prolonged today by many living writers, poets, novelists, essayists and journalists, among them Mesdames Maryse Condé and Simone Schwartz-Bart, M. Ernest Pépin.

Music and dance are also very popular, and the widely accepted interaction of African, French and Indian cultures has given birth to some original new forms specific to the archipelago. Islanders enjoy many local dance styles including zouk, zouk-love, kompa, as well as the modern international dances such as hip hop, ect. Traditional Guadeloupean music includes la biguine, Kadans, Cadence-lypso and gwo ka. Popular music artists and bands such as Experience 7, Francky Vincent, Kassav', Admiral T or Patrick St-Eloi embody the traditional music style of the island and the new generation of music, while some other music artist such as Tom Frager - who grew up there in Guadeloupe, performs colorful reggae music that defines the Guadeloupe island as paradise-like. Many international festivals take place in Guadeloupe, like the Creole Blues Festival hosted in Marie-Galante. It goes without saying that all the Euro-French forms of art are also ubiquitous. The melting pot is emphasized by other communities (Brazil, Dominican Republic, Haiti, India, Lebanon, Syria) who live on the island and share their cultures.

Whilst not in the Guadeloupean style Catherine Quinol, aka Katrin, is known worldwide as the lip synching icon of the piano-house trio Black Box, who burst on to the Music Scene in the late 80s with songs such as Ride On Time. Katrin is, however, a trained singer and she went on to release her own work.

Another element of the Guadeloupean culture is its dress. A few women (the elder ones for the majority) have a unique style of traditional dresses, with many layers of colourful fabrics, now only worn on special occasions. On festive occasions they also wore a madras (originally the 'kerchief' from South India) head scarf tied in many different symbolic forms. The headdress could be done in many styles with names like the "bat" style, or the "firefighter" style, as well as the "Guadeloupean woman." Jewelry, mainly of gold, is also important in the Guadeloupean lady's dress, a product of European, African and Indian inspiration.

Located as the southernmost of the Leeward Islands in the eastern Caribbean Sea, Guadeloupe comprises two main islands: Basse-Terre Island, Grande-Terre (separated from Basse-Terre by a narrow sea channel called Salt River). The adjacent French islands of La Désirade, Les Saintes and Marie-Galante come under jurisdiction of Guadeloupe.

Western Basse-Terre has a rough volcanic relief while eastern Grande-Terre features rolling hills and flat plains.

Further to the north, Saint-Barthélemy and the northern French part of Saint Martin once came under the jurisdiction of Guadeloupe but on 7 December 2003, both of these areas voted to become an overseas territorial collectivity, a decision which took effect on 22 February 2007.

Hurricanes

The island was devastated by several hurricanes in modern times:

Climate