New Caledonia
24 to 29th January 2001
is the place it all started ... but I had no clue of it while waiting to board Air France!
The English explorer Captain James Cook sighted Grand Terre in 1774 and named it New Caledonia,
as he liked to think it reminded him of the Scottish highlands, which the Romans had called Caledonia.
By 1853, Napoleon III was looking for a strategic military location and, concerned that the British might get there first, he annexed Grande Terre under the pretext of protecting France's missions. The French moved in and governed by military regime for the rest of the 19th century. The French saw the Pacific as a good place to dump their great unwashed masses, and they deported their first convicts in May 1864. Many were political prisoners from the Paris Commune, but others were the derelicts and petty thieves from the streets of the metropolis, who became known as 'wretches in paradise'. By the time deportation was banned in 1897, 21,000 convicts had been sent. The discovery of nickel and the arrival of free settlers from France exacerbated the race problem, as Europeans encroached on ever more tribal lands. In 1878, a seven-month revolt against French rule resulted in 200 French and 1200 Kanak deaths. The repression that followed further weakened Kanak culture.
