[5][6] The first French commercial venture to India is believed to have taken place in the first half of the 16th century, in the reign of King Francis I, when two ships were fitted out by some merchants of Rouen to trade in eastern seas; they sailed from Le Havre and were never heard of again.

[7] La Compagnie française des Indes orientales (French East India Company) was formed under the auspices of Cardinal Richelieu (1642) and reconstructed under Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1664) when he sent an expedition to Madagascar.

Chandernagore (present-day Chandannagar) was established in 1692, with the permission of Nawab Shaista Khan, the Mughal governor of Bengal.

In 1673, the French acquired the area of Pondicherry from the qiladar of Valikondapuram under the Sultan of Bijapur, and thus the foundation of Pondichéry was laid.

In 1674, François Martin, the first Governor, initiated ambitious projects to transform Pondichéry from a small fishing village into a flourishing port-town.

Under the command of the Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau, Dupleix's army successfully controlled the area between Hyderabad and Cape Comorin.

In spite of a treaty between the British and French agreeing not to interfere in regional Indian affairs, their colonial intrigues continued.

Governor Jean Law de Lauriston set to rebuild the town on its former layout and after five months 200 European and 2000 Tamil houses had been erected.

In 1816, after the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, the five establishments of Pondichéry, Chandernagore, Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam and the lodges at Machilipatnam, Kozhikode and Surat were returned to France.

Pondichéry had lost much of its former glory, and Chandernagore dwindled into an insignificant outpost to the north of the rapidly growing British metropolis of Calcutta.

"Our immense empire of India was reduced to five settlements" wrote French economist and colonial expansion promoter Pierre Paul Leroy-Beaulieu in 1886.

[11] An atlas published in the 1930s described those five settlements as "remnants of the great colonial empire that France had created in India in the 18th century".

The historian of French India and archivist Alfred Martineau, who was also governor of French India, pointed out that the authority granted to Dupleix over the Carnatic in 1750 should not be construed as a transfer of sovereignty, as wrote most historians, given that Dupleix only became so to speak the lieutenant of the Indian subah, who could withdraw his power delegation at his convenience.

The first High Commissioner, Kewal Singh was appointed immediately after the Kizhoor referendum on 21 October 1954 as per Foreign Jurisdiction Act, 1947.