Guadeloupe
overseas region and department of France, and archipelago in the Caribbean
Guadeloupe is an overseas department and region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands—Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, La Désirade, and two Îles des Saintes—and 30 uninhabited islets and 3 inhabited islets. It is south of Antigua and Barbuda and Montserrat and north of Dominica. The capital city is Basse-Terre, on the southern west coast of Basse-Terre Island; the most populous city is Les Abymes and the main centre of business is neighbouring Pointe-à-Pitre, both on Grande-Terre Island. It had a population of 395,726 in 2024.
Like the other overseas departments, it is an integral part of France. As a constituent territory of the European Union (EU) and the eurozone, the euro is its official currency and any EU citizen is free to settle and work there indefinitely, but it is not part of the Schengen Area. It included Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin until 2007, when they were detached from Guadeloupe following a 2003 referendum.
Christopher Columbus visited Guadeloupe in 1493 and gave the island its name, after Guadalupe, Cáceres. The native language is Guadeloupean Creole known as "Kréyòl Gwadloup"; the official language is French, spoken by 84% of the population.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Guadeloupe” is overseas region and department of France, and archipelago in the Caribbean. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Guadeloupe, overseas and region, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “overseas region and department of France, and archipelago in the Caribbean” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17012. VIAF identifies the subject as 125492276. The Library of Congress control number is n80131903. Authority coordinates are 16.250, -61.500. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024, 2007, 2003 and 1493.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Guadeloupe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.