10 French exploration in the Age of Discovery

Jacques Nicolas Bellin was a French hydrographer, geographer, and member of the French intellectual group called the philosophes.

Jacques Cartier was a French-Breton maritime explorer for France. Jacques Cartier was the first European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, which he named "The Country of Canadas" after the Iroquois names for the two big settlements he saw at Stadacona and at Hochelaga.

Jean Cousin, also Jehan Cousin, was a 15th-century French Normand navigator who was said to have discovered the New World in 1488, four years before Christopher Columbus, when he landed in Brazil around the mouth of the Amazon. One of his captains was named Alonzo Pinzón, who left Cousin in a dispute after their return to Dieppe, and who is claimed to have left for Spain from where he advised Columbus on his westward sail. Pinzon is known to have displayed a remarkable confidence in guiding Columbus in his discovery of the New World. No indisputable written records remain however to support Cousin's claim to discovery.

The Dieppe maps are a series of world maps produced in Dieppe, France, in the 1540s, 1550s, and 1560s. They are large hand-produced maps, commissioned for wealthy and royal patrons, including Henry II of France and Henry VIII of England. The Dieppe school of cartographers included Pierre Desceliers, Jean Rotz, Guillaume Le Testu, Guillaume Brouscon and Nicolas Desliens.

The French colonization of the Americas began in the 17th century, and continued on into the following centuries as France established a colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere. France founded colonies in much of eastern North America, on a number of Caribbean islands, and in South America. Most colonies were developed to export products such as fish, rice, sugar, and furs.

History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Also Called America, is an account published by the French Huguenot Jean de Léry in 1578 about his experiences living in a Calvinist colony in the Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After the colony dissolved, De Léry spent two months living with the Tupinambá Indians.

The New Found World, or Antarctike is the English title of an account first published in French in 1557 by the French Franciscan priest and explorer André Thevet after his experiences in France Antarctique, a French settlement in modern Rio de Janeiro.

New France was the area colonized by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris (1763).

Jean Parmentier (1494–1529), born in Dieppe, France, was a navigator, cartographer, and poet. Jean and his brother Raoul made numerous voyages for the shipowner Jean Ango.

Nicolas Durand, sieur de Villegaignon, also Villegagnon was a Commander of the Knights of Malta, and later a French naval officer who attempted to help the Huguenots in France escape persecution.