Located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America and inhabited by Amerindians indigenous peoples, Guiana was first encountered by Europeans in 1498 when Christopher Columbus reached it, naming the region the "Land of Pariahs".
Contemporary communities of escaped slaves in neighboring Brazil, such as Palmares (1605–1694) and its leader Zumbi, have sometimes been upheld by modern anarchists as examples of early anti-colonialism, decentralization, and democracy.
After the French Revolution of 1848, in which early anarchists like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Joseph Déjacque participated, slavery was again abolished, leading to a massive increase in the maroon population.
The Communard, who was killed on the barricades, wrote an account of his imprisonment in Guiana; De Paris à Cayenne, Journal d'un transporté.
The most prominent anarchist imprisoned in French Guiana was the illegalist Clément Duval (1850–1935), who - unable to work after being wounded in the Franco-Prussian War - turned to theft.
In the following manhunt, Achille Charles Simon - an accomplice of the executed bomber Ravachol - was shot after being found hiding, as were the anarchists Marsevin, Lebault and Léon-Jules Léauthier (the later of which had been sentenced for trying to stab the Serbian Minister in Paris to death[5]).
In the following chaos, the guards killed numerous anarchist prisoners, among them Dervaux, Boesie, Garnier, Benoit Chevenet, Edouard Aubin Marpaux, Mattei, Maxime Lebeau, Mazarquil, Henri Pierre Meyrveis, Auguste Alfred Faugoux, Thiervoz, and Bernard Mamert.
[6] Other anarchist prisoners in French Guiana included Marius Jacob, an illegalist burglar who spent fourteen years in Cayenne and was one of the inspirations for the author Maurice Leblanc's character Arsène Lupin, the Bonnot Gang members Jean De Boe (who after his escape in 1922 fled to Brussels, becoming a noted anarcho-syndicalist) and Eugène Dieudonné (who was pardoned, after escaping prison in December 1926), and Paul Roussenq, who spent a whole twenty years in Guiana on charges of military insubordination, later visiting the Soviet Union (becoming a firm critic of it) and being interned by Vichy France.