The country received the largest number of French immigrants to South America after Argentina (239,000) and Brazil (100,000), with almost 25,000 persons registered between 1833 and 1843.
Thus, while the United States received 195,971 French immigrants between 1820 and 1855, 13,922 Frenchmen, most of them from the Basque Country and Béarn, left for Uruguay between 1833 and 1842.
[1] Then, after the fall of Rosas in 1852, Argentina overtook Uruguay and became the main pole of attraction for French immigrants in Latin America.
Until 1853, French Basques constituted the most numerous group among all immigrants in Uruguay,[2] then they were surpassed in numbers by Spaniards and Italians.
The most recent figure corresponds to the 2011 Uruguayan census, which revealed 850 people who declared France as their country of birth.