Country · Antarctic
French Southern and Antarctic Lands
Territory of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands
The French Southern and Antarctic Lands is a territory in Antarctic. It covers 7 747 square kilometres. Its capital city is Port-aux-Français.
Picture credit: Antoine Lamielle (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Antoine Lamielle (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Antoine Lamielle (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is the French Southern and Antarctic Lands?
The French Southern and Antarctic Lands lies in Antarctic, on the continent of Antarctic.
It sits in the southern half of the world, roughly 5 483 km from the equator.
It has no land neighbours — every border it has is with the sea.
How big is the French Southern and Antarctic Lands?
The French Southern and Antarctic Lands covers 7 747 square kilometres.
That is about 3 times the size of Luxembourg.
Who lives in the French Southern and Antarctic Lands?
People here speak French.
They pay with the Euro (€).
The land of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands
It lies between the tropics and the poles, which is the single biggest reason its weather is the way it is.
What makes the French Southern and Antarctic Lands different?
Websites from here often end in .tf.
The French Southern and Antarctic Lands and the rest of the world
It takes up about 0.01 % of all the land that countries stand on.
A country, or a territory?
The French Southern and Antarctic Lands is not an independent country but a territory. It has its own name, its own borders and often its own laws, but another country speaks for it abroad — it holds no seat of its own at the United Nations, for instance.
That is more common than it sounds. There are dozens of such places around the world: some sit far from the country they belong to, some right beside it. A few govern themselves almost completely and hand over only defence and foreign policy; others are held more closely. How much a territory decides for itself is settled case by case, never by one rule.
On this site territories get a page of their own, because children look them up and because other pages link to them. They are left out of the record lists, though: those rank only members of the United Nations, so that a ranking never mixes countries with places belonging to somebody else.
Nature and animals
Of the animals on this site, 2 live wild in the French Southern and Antarctic Lands: Wandering albatross and Southern elephant seal.
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons under free licences — every credit is on the page itself and in the picture credits.
How big is the French Southern and Antarctic Lands compared with the United States?
- The United States is about 1 210 times as big as the French Southern and Antarctic Lands: 9 372 610 km² against 7 747 km².
- The United Kingdom is about 31 times as big as the French Southern and Antarctic Lands: 242 900 km² against 7 747 km².
Questions children ask
What is the capital of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands?
The capital of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands is Port-aux-Français. It is the city where the country's government works from.
How big is the French Southern and Antarctic Lands?
The French Southern and Antarctic Lands covers 7 747 square kilometres. That is about 3 times the size of Luxembourg.
Which continent is the French Southern and Antarctic Lands in?
The French Southern and Antarctic Lands is in Antarctic.
Where these numbers come from
Borders and outlines: Natural Earth. Names, capitals, areas, languages and currencies: ISO 3166 data (world-countries). Population: World Bank, 2018. Every derived figure on this page (ranks, density, distance from the equator) is calculated from those values.
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