French New Caledonia
New Caledonia and the adjacent Loyalty Islands were drawn into the nineteenth-century whaling industry when British, French and American captains began to employ their menfolk as crew and shore labourers.
This was bolstered by the sandalwood and beche-de- mer industries, largely working out of the Australian colonies, which provided more sustained contact through shore stations. Given the proximity of New Caledonia to Australia and already established British commercial and missionary interests there, the islands offered an unlikely candidate for French annexation, but the French wanted a penal colony in the Pacific, similar to that which the English had developed in New South Wales. Meanwhile, cattle, coffee and sugarcane production had been introduced, bolstered by nickel mining which began in 1874. Until the late 1890s the penal aspect of the colony predominated, after which free settlers began to outnumber convicts. The pressure on land because of the growing number of French settlers led to large-scale land alienation and use of forced labour to maintain plantations. A major indigenous insurrection in 1878 was put down with increased repression.In 1875, two-thirds of the 15,000-strong European population were convicts, but by 1901 the ratio had been reversed. Free labour came not from the Kanaks (indigenous New Caledonians) but from the ex-convicts and introduced indentured labour. Twenty- two thousand French convicts arrived between 1864 and 1895, along with around 1,000 Solomon Islanders, 10,000 to 13,000 New Hebrideans, 33,000 Indonesians (primarily Javanese) and 14,000 other Asians (mainly Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese).4 While many eventually returned home, sufficient numbers remained to swamp the European population. Therefore, although New Caledonia was classed as a settler society, it remained highly dependent on both Kanaks and other Pacific and Asian labourers.
The French administration organised and controlled the importation and return home of indentured labourers. Regulations offered little protection to the labourers and there was no minimum wage rate. Officials also encouraged French families to migrate to New Caledonia, superseding the convicts. After being earlier considered unsuitable as labourers, the Kanaks had their labour power appropriated. The French regime imposed a head tax on natives which forced Kanak males to work for the French settlers. Since local French agents supervised all districts, indigenous chiefs, appointed by the governor, became more like assistants for the colonial officials and when they refused to cooperate were replaced by more compliant Kanaks. Kanaks were required to work on public projects for twelve days each year.
Asian labourers became a dominant element of the population. The first Chinese labourers arrived in 1843, followed by a small group of Indians from Reunion Island who worked in the sugar industry then dispersed into the Kanak population. Once the nickel industry developed, convict labour was replaced by Chinese, Javanese and Japanese, with the Japanese receiving honorary European status. They moved into the retail trade, rivalling the French settlers, which led to the cessation of Japanese migration in 1919. Japanese companies also entered the nickel industry, competition for the French Societe Le Nickel, the colony’s largest mining interest. The French grew increasingly concerned and on Japan’s entry into the Second World War were relieved to seize Japanese property and deport Japanese nationals. The French had meanwhile turned to their own Indochina colonies for labour. Vietnamese labour migration was so substantial that by 1929, the 14,535 Asians in New Caledonia outnumbered the Europeans.
In the Second World War, New Caledonia became a southern base in the Allied fight back against the Japanese, and after the war nickel mining and urban industries dominated the economy.
Cattle ranching declined, although coffee and copra plantations remained. Kanak villages were heavily involved in wage and corvee (unfree and unpaid, usually for set periods every month) labour but also maintained a subsistence economy. Most Europeans lived in Noumea, the capital, which dominated the economy. Labourers began to migrate from Wallis and Futuna, another nearby French territory in the central Pacific. White settlers, called Caldoches, while never dominant in numbers, maintained absolute control. Not until the 1980s did the Kanak minority become militant in an effort to gain independence. The most important Kanak succession leader was Jean-Marie Tjbaou. The son of a tribal leader, and a former Catholic priest, he stood in a local government election in 1977. Two years later he became territorial councillor in the newly formed Independence Front, then in 1984 he was head of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS). Tjbaou was assassinated in 1989 after a decade of unrest and violent conflicts between supporters of independence (largely Kanaks) and opponents (a coalition of French, Asians and Polynesians).
More on the topic French New Caledonia:
- Maritime, Imperial and Postcolonial Histories
- Commerce, sport and empire
- Hill stations
- The British in the Coral Sea: Fiji