Dutch colonisation of the Guianas Marajó island of the Amazon river delta in the southeast. Although the Dutch colony of Surinam has always been officially known as Surinam or Suriname, in both Dutch and English, the colony was often unofficially and semi-officially referred to as Dutch Guiana (Dutch: "Nederlands Guiana") in the 19th and 20th century, in an analogy to British Guiana and French Guiana. Using this term for Suriname is problematic, however, as historically Suriname was only one of many Dutch colonies in the Guianas, others being Berbice, Essequibo, Demerara, and Pomeroon, which after being taken over by the United Kingdom in 1814, were
French Guiana and the European Space Agency (ESA). In the late 1970s and early 1980s, several thousand Hmong refugees from Laos immigrated to French Guiana, fleeing displacement after United States involvement in the Vietnam War. Fully integrated in the French central state in the 21st century, Guiana is a part of the European Union, and its official currency is the euro. The region has the highest nominal GDP per capita in South America. A large part of Guiana's economy derives from jobs and businesses associated with the presence of the Guiana Space Centre, now the European Space Agency's primary launch site near