THE TROUBLES which wracked New Caledonia in the late 1980s, the controversy about French nuclear testing on the atoll of Mururoa in the Pacific, the periodic launching of satellites from French Guiana (Guyane) and even the ‘cod war’ between France and Canada over fishing rights near Saint-Pierre and Miquelon have intermittently brought the existence of the French départements et territoires d'outre-mer (DOM-TOMs), France's overseas outposts, into a wider focus. The ten DOM-TOMs are strategically scattered around the world in the Atlantic, Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Oceans and in Antarctica. Despite their distance from France, the metropolitan ‘hexagon’, the départements d'outre-mer (DOMs), are legally as much a part of France as Paris or Marseille. The DOMs, at least in theory, have institutions and legal systems that replicate those of the métropole; the territoires d'outre-mer (TOMs), although enjoying greater autonomy and particularistic institutions, are also legally part of the French Republic. Many of the DOM-TOMs have been part of France much longer than Nice and Corsica. The remnants of France's once vast overseas empires, they account for a population of one and a half million French citizens and cover a land area of over 120,000 square kilometres, even excluding the French region of Antarctica. With the recognition of exclusive economic zones in the Law of the Sea agreements, the DOM-TOMs give France the third-largest maritime area in the world.