Almost 500 years ago, French ships landed in what is now Brazil with a mission to found ‘France Antarctique’, a new colony on South America’s Atlantic coast. Riven by religious divisions and stormed by Portuguese rivals, the project lasted just a few years – but would end up reshaping Europeans’ understanding of the so-called New World.

The voyage began in 1555, 63 years after Europeans had learned that the Americas existed – or 67, if you believe some French accounts that the first explorer to reach the continent wasn’t Christopher Columbus, but a sailor from Normandy named Jean Cousin.

The Catholic Church had decreed that the new territory would be divided between the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. But that hadn’t stopped French traders venturing to South America to look for valuable commodities to bring back – notably brazilwood, the trees that lined the Atlantic coast and yielded a prized red dye.

They had established contact with indigenous people and some had even settled there. Under King Henri II, France decided it was time to set up a formal outpost in an area the Portuguese were yet to occupy: Guanabara Bay, a natural harbour on the southeastern coast.

Mistakenly believing the area to lie further south than it did, they dubbed it France Antarctique.

A French map of South America from 1575, with France Antarctique shown on the eastern coast. © Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Laying foundations

Two warships and a supply boat set sail from the port of Le Havre in mid-1555, carrying some 600 colonists. Commanding them was Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon, a swashbuckling vice-admiral who had distinguished himself fighting France’s wars against the English and the Ottomans.

He landed on 10 November and was met by members of the indigenous Tupinambá people. Hostile to the Portuguese settlers, they saw a strategic opportunity to ally with their European rivals.

Villegagnon’s first task was to build a fort. He and his men chose a rocky island within firing distance of the mainland, where they soon completed Fort Coligny – named for Gaspard de Coligny, the admiral of France’s navy and a driving force behind their mission.

Later they would add a settlement on the mainland, Henriville, named after the king.

Listen to this story on the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 134:

Spotlight on France, episode 134 © RFI

Tensions soon flared between Villegagnon and the settlers, who resented his ban on relations with indigenous women outside Christian marriage. Some even made an abortive attempt to overthrow their commander.

Resentment was also building among Tupinambá workers, exhausted by relentless labour and an epidemic.

In early 1556, Villegagnon sent to France for reinforcements: soldiers, craftsmen and marriageable women.

Faith wars

He issued another invitation that would prove fateful. With the Wars of Religion brewing between Catholics and Protestants in France, Villegagnon – who by some accounts had converted to the reformed faith – opened the colony to Huguenots facing persecution.

The supply mission arrived in March 1557. It comprised nearly 300 settlers, including a handful of women and a dozen Calvinists.

A map of Guanabara Bay by French chronicler André Thevet, showing ‘Henriville’ on the mainland and ‘French Island’ in the bay. © Public domain / Bibliothèque nationale de France

Villegagnon quickly fell out with the Protestants, getting into impassioned arguments over matters of doctrine. By October he had banished them to the mainland, where some settled among the locals and others sailed home.

A few ill advisedly returned to the island, where Villegagnon suspected them of plotting an ambush. He had three of them executed by drowning.

By late 1559, with stories of his excesses reaching France, Villegagnon returned home to defend himself and drum up resources. It was the last he’d see of France Antarctique.

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Portuguese attack

At the same moment, four years after the French colonists landed, the Portuguese decided it was hight time that they left. Not only were they competing for land and trade, the French had brought Protestants to challenge Portugal’s strictly Catholic mission.

On royal orders, the governor-general of the Portuguese colony in Brazil, Mem de Sá, gathered a fleet of warships. He surrounded Fort Coligny in March 1560 and, when the French refused to surrender, fired the cannon.

An illustration showing the Portuguese attack on Fort Chaligny on 15 March 1560, taken from a contemporary French account by André Thevet. © Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

His forces stormed the fort as the French and their Tupinambá allies fled.

Some of the survivors resettled among indigenous communities on the mainland, where they continued to fight for several more years with the Tupinambá against the Portuguese – who by now were determined to claim Guanabara Bay for themselves.

Finally, in January 1567, the Portuguese declared victory and expelled the last remaining French for good.

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Legacy in Western imaginations

For a project that lasted barely 12 years, *France Antarctique *left a considerable legacy.

It spurred Portugal to found a settlement in its place: Rio de Janiero, the city that overlooks Guanabara Bay.

It also set a precedent for other French land grabs. In 1612, France tried to establish another foothold further up the Brazilian coast, this time to be known as France Equinoxiale. The Portuguese once more sent them packing, but subsequent expeditions eventually resulted in the establishment of French Guiana, which remains part of France to this day.

Villegagnon’s expedition also generated some of the most detailed accounts Europe had ever seen of indigenous people and customs in the Americas. Scholars say those descriptions helped define the picture that Europeans had of the New World.

Illustrations of indigenous people in what is now Brazil in André Thevet’s contemporary account of the French colony in Guanabara Bay. © Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Some 25 years after Villegagnon landed, philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote his essay “Of Cannibals”. Based on accounts of the Tupinambà from France Antarctique, it describes their practice of ritual cannibalism – and asks whether this makes them any more “savage” than warmongering Europeans.

“I find that there is nothing barbarous and savage in this nation, by anything that I can gather, excepting, that every one gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country,” Montaigne wrote.

It marked a rethink of mental maps that made Europe the centre of civilisation and a step towards a more nuanced, if romanticised, understanding of other cultures.

As for the French colony itself, no physical traces remain. But travel to Rio and, opposite one of the city’s airports, you’ll spot a small island.

Now home to the Brazilian naval academy, it’s what the Tupinambà called Serigipe, “crab water island”, and the Portuguese Ilha das Palmeiras, “palm tree island”.

Today, it goes by “the island of Villegagnon”.