DUNQUERQUE, or DUNKIRK, a strongly fortified seaport-town of France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of the Nord, is situated on the E. shore of the Straits of Dover, 174 miles from Paris, and 50 miles from Lille; N. Lat. 51.2.; E. Long. 2.3. Pop. (1851) 26,886.

Dunkerque is a handsome and well-built town, with an air of great bustle and commercial prosperity. Its principal public squares, the Place Jean Bart and the Champ-de-Mars, are wide and spacious, planted with trees and adorned with statues. The public buildings worthy of notice are the church of St Eloi, a motley edifice, partly Gothic and partly Corinthian in architecture; the barracks and military magazines, the belfry, the lighthouse, and the theatre. The trade of Dunkerque is already very considerable, and has increased with great rapidity ever since the town was made a free port in 1826. The chief articles of manufacture are soap, beet-root sugar, starch, and leather. There are also some important shipbuilding-yards and iron-foundries. The fisheries of the coast are valuable and extensive. Dunkerque possesses tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce, a custom-house, and a school of navigation; and the consuls of various foreign countries reside in the town.

Dunkerque traces its existence as far back as the days of St Eloi, who is said to have founded on the site of the present town a chapel round which a small village speedily sprang up. In the tenth century Baldwin III., Count of Flanders, raised the village to the rank of a town; and in the sixteenth century Charles V. built a fort for the protection of the harbour, no traces of which, however, now exist. In 1558 the English, who had for some time held possession of the town, were expelled from it by the French, who in the ensuing year surrendered it to the Spaniards. In the middle of the seventeenth century it once more passed into the hands of the French, who, after a few years' occupation of it, again restored it to Spain. In 1658 it was retaken by the French and made over to the English. After the restoration, Charles II. was compelled by his extravagance to sell the town to the French king Louis XIV., who fortified it. In 1793 it was attacked by the English under the Duke of York, who, however, was compelled to retire from before its walls with severe loss.