New York in 1689. South America A colonizing party of 500 and a mission of four Franciscans were sent under a 1611 patent letter from the Regent Marie de Médicis. The colonial enterprise to found "France Équinoxiale" was led by Daniel de la Tousche, Sieur de la Ravardière, and François de Razilly. The outpost would later become the city of São Luís do Maranhão. The French arrived in the island in August 1612. One of the objectives of the mission was to establish trade in brazilwood and tobacco. When France and Spain (including Portugal in the Iberian Union) became allied through the marriage of Louis XIII with Anne of Austria in 1615, support for the colony was discontinued and the colonists abandoned. The Portuguese soon managed to expel the French from the colony. In 1624, settlement along the South American coast in what is today French Guiana began. West Indies The French also started to establish smaller but more profitable colonies in the West Indies. A colony was founded on Saint Kitts in 1625, in sharing with the English until the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, when it was occupied in its entirety. The Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique founded colonies in Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1635, and a colony was later founded on Saint Lucia by 1650. The food-producing plantations of these colonies were built and sustained through slavery, with the supply of slaves dependent on the African slave trade. Local resistance by the indigenous peoples resulted in the Carib Expulsion of 1660. The most important Caribbean colonial possession did not come until 1664, when the colony of Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti) was founded on the western half of the Spanish island of Hispaniola. Consolidation and conflict (18th century) Triangular trade [[File:La Rochelle slave ship Le Saphir 1741.jpg|thumb|left|La Rochelle slave ship Le Saphir ex-voto, 1741.]] Triangular trade developed and became extremely prosperous one, marked by intense exchanges with the New World (Nouvelle France in Canada, and the Antilles). French cities of the Atlantic Coast, mainly Nantes, La Rochelle, Lorient and Bordeaux, became very active in triangular trade with the New World, dealing in the slave trade with Africa, sugar trade with plantations of the Antilles, and fur trade with Canada. This was a period of high artistic, cultural and architectural achievements for these cities. In the 18th century, Saint-Domingue grew to be the richest sugar colony in the Caribbean. On