Dutch Empire lost a number of its colonial possessions and trade monopolies to the British Empire. Nevertheless, major portions of the empire survived until the advent of global decolonisation following World War II (1939–1945), namely the East Indies (Indonesia) and Dutch Guiana (Surinam). Three former colonial territories in the West Indies islands around the Caribbean Sea—Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten—remain as constituent countries represented within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The territories that would later form the Dutch Republic began as a loose federation known as the Seventeen Provinces, which Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and (as "Carlos I") King of Spain,
French Guiana the population) are the Arawak, Carib, Emerillon (now called the Teko), Galibi (now called the Kaliña), Palikur, Wayampi and Wayana. As of the late 1990s, there was evidence of an uncontacted group of Wayampi. The dominant religion of French Guiana is Roman Catholicism; the Maroons and some Amerindian peoples maintain their own religions. The Hmong people are also largely Catholic owing to the influence of missionaries who helped bring them to French Guiana. The total fertility rate in French Guiana has remained high and is today considerably higher than that of metropolitan France, as well as most of the other