Adrian Muckle

Killing the Fantme Canaque: evoking and invoking the possibility of revolt in New Caledonia (1853-1915)

Evocations and invocations of the possibility of revolt or violence on the part of Kanak were an ever present feature of European settler discourse in 19th and early 20th century New Caledonia. Within this discourse, there was a constant tension between the possibility of (or potential for) violence invoked by settlers, and the attempts of colonial administrators to deny this possibility. For the local administration, denial of the possibility of a mass Kanak revolt was part of an attempt to move towards a more indirect form of control over the dangerous individual. Settler evocations or invocations of the possibility of revolt can be seen, depending on the context, as direct threats to Kanak, as appeals for administrative intervention (repression) or as rhetorical attacks on the local administration.

The Presumption of Indigeneity

From 1887 to 1946, the administrative apparatus known as the indigénat provided French administrators in New Caledonia with a set of exceptional measures to streamline the governing and summary repression of persons defined as indigènes (‘natives’). This paper examines the place of the indigénat, the role of colonial administrators in defining one or more communities of race and the variable status of the category of indigène in New Caledonia in the period to 1946. Particular consideration is given to the influence (or absence thereof) of the science of race on administrative thinking about native policy in New Caledonia, the distinctions drawn between different categories of indigène, the extent to which cultural and political divisions between the Grande terre (mainland) and the Loyalty Islands were imagined or constructed in racial terms and the situation of métis (‘half-castes’). The paper argues that an incipient definition of the indigène as a person of Melanesian, Polynesian, mixed or Oceanian race must be understood in the context of the development of the indentured labour and immigration regimes (the importation of workers from Asia and other parts of Oceania) as well as the ways in which the indigénat was differently applied and experienced between New Caledonias mainland and its dependencies (notably the Loyalty Islands), as well as by métis.

Conjurer la guerre: violence et pouvoir à Houaïlou (Nouvelle-Calédonie)

A word to the wise to begin with: the literal translation of this books title – Conjuring War: violence and power at Houailou (New Caledonia) – does not do full justice to the polysemy of the orig...

The ‘Chief without Power’?

In accounts of the Kanak (Melanesian) opposition to the recruitment of volunteers for the Great War in 1916–17 and of the war that followed in the north of New Caledonia in 1917–18, the involvement of a district grand chef, Téâ Antoine Katélia, was the subject of conflicting testimonies. Drawing extensively upon archival materials dating from before, during and after the war, this paper examines the contested authority of a Kanak chief in the early-20th century and contributes to the local history of the Koné region.

‘No More Violence nor War’: -- 20 Years of Nation-Building in New Caledonia

‘Soyons unis, soyons frères, plus de violence ni de guerre. Marchons confiants et solidaires, pour notre pays.’ Evoking unity, brotherhood and a desire to move beyond the violence that has characterised New Caledonia’s past (as well as that other famous marching song, the Marseillaise), these words belong to the chorus of what will soon be New Caledonia’s official anthem. After a countrywide competition, a bill to ratify the choice of an anthem for the country, a motto (Terre de parole, terre de partage — land of the word, land of sharing) and new designs for its bank notes were adopted in a special sitting of New Caledonia’s government on 26 June 2008. The same day saw the first celebration of a public holiday to promote ‘reconciliation’ and the development of a ‘shared future’ and to honour the Matignon–Oudinot Accords of 1988 and the 1998 Nouméa Accord. The bill was hailed as a further step towards reconciliation and the establishment of the ‘identifying symbols of the country’ expressing ‘the Kanak identity and the future shared by all’ as called for by the Nouméa Accord. The only hint of dissent came from the main loyalist party, the Rassemblement-UMP, which abstained from the vote on a measure it deemed ‘precipitous’. New Caledonia is yet to make the still more sensitive choices of a flag and a name, but the anthem is the most powerful symbol yet of the nation-building process under way since 1988. Then, after the signing of the Matignon–Oudinot Accords which set 1998 as the year for a referendum on self-determination, the leader of the Front de libération nationale kanak et socialiste (FLNKS), Jean-Marie Tjibaou, related that there was more at stake than just the symbols of nationhood:

Contesting Colonial Violence in New Caledonia

The assumptions, agreements and disagreements related to three connected instances of violence in the context of a small war in 1917 bring into focus the dynamics, structures and relationships that are part of the history of colonial violence in the French settler colony of New Caledonia: the tensions between the administration and different categories of settlers; the relations between gendarmes and administrative chiefs; the role played by missionary critics; and the part that indigenous conceptions and practices of violence had in shaping settler reactions.

Decolonisation and the Pacific

Since the foundation of The Journal of Pacific History in 1966, the study of decolonisation in the Pacific has never been far from the historical limelight, but the critical approaches, perspective...

Rock of Contention: Free French and Americans at War in New Caledonia, 1940-1945 (review)

emphasizes that the USSR was an aggressor state as well as a ‘victim’ in World War II due to its unprovoked attacks on Poland and Finland and its annexation of the Baltic Republics, to say nothing of Moscow’s oppression of recalcitrant Soviet Republics, especially Ukraine. Furthermore, the USSR under Stalin was a brutal tyranny that boasted the largest concentration camp system in Europe (p. 328) and which massacred its own subjects as well as its enemies without compunction. Davies argues that Stalin’s regime was every bit as inequitable as Hitler’s Germany. This fact was reprehensively overlooked by the Western Allies due to their dependence upon the Red Army to defeat the Wehrmacht in the field. A few slipshod errors notwithstanding, Europe at War is a true tour de force. The thematic approach is a novel and largely effective one, if occasionally a bit arbitrary and fragmented. It is difficult to conceive of a topic that Davies does not address in this encyclopedic account. Some of the under-recognized aspects of the Second World War that Davies dutifully underlines are, for example: the plight of refugees, especially the German ‘expellees’ from Prussia and Silesia; the scale of rape by Soviet, German and American troops; and the discreditable abstention of Eire from the war that assisted Germany’s U-Boat campaign. The book is powerfully argued and no participant country is spared the author’s eviscerating critique (except perhaps pre-Communist Poland!). In this broad, incisive and oftentimes polemical account, Davies acts as agent provocateur, disturbing the ideologicallydriven conventional narratives that the general public (and many scholars) are comfortable with. Not surprisingly the book has generated serious controversy. I doubt the author expected otherwise.