Etablissement Francais dans l'Inde.

  French India Company is a general name for the former French possessions in India. The first French expedition to India is believed to have taken place in the first half of the 16th century, during the reign of François I. when two ships were fitted out by some merchants of Rouen to trade in eastern seas. In 1667 the French India Company sent out another expedition, under the command of François Caron, which reached Surat in 1668 and established the first French factory in India. Between 1720 and 1741, the objectives of the French were purely commercial. All factories were fortified for the purpose of defense. In the 18th century the town of Pondichéry was laid out on a grid pattern and grew considerably. Pierre Benoît Dumas (1735–41) expanded the Pondichéry area and made it a large and rich town. the most famous French Governor of Pondichéry and all French India arrived in 1741, Joseph François Dupleix began to cherish the ambition of a French Empire in India but his superiors had less interest. French ambition clashed with the British interests in India and a period of military skirmishes and political intrigues began. Under the command of the Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau, Dupleix's army successfully controlled the area between Hyderabad and Cape Comorin. But then Robert Clive arrived in India in 1744, a dare-devil British officer who dashed the hopes of Dupleix to create a French Colonial India. In 1761 Pondichéry was razed to the ground by the British in revenge and lay in ruins for four years. During the next 50 years Pondichéry changed hands between France and Britain with the regularity of their wars and peace treaties.
The independence of India in August 1947 gave impetus to the union of France's Indian possessions with former British India. The lodges in Machilipatnam, Kozhikode and Surat were ceded to India in October 1947. An agreement between France and India in 1948 agreed to an election in France's remaining Indian possessions to choose their political future. Governance of Chandernagore was ceded to India on 2 May 1950, then it was merged with West Bengal state on 2 October 1955. On November 1, 1954, the four enclaves of Pondichéry, Yanam, Mahe, and Karikal were de facto transferred to the Indian Union and became the Union Territory of Pondichéry. The de jure union of French India with India did not take place until 1962, when the French Parliament in Paris ratified the treaty with India.