In 1887, construction began on the Eiffel Tower, the pride of Paris and of a France that felt it was the center of the world and the pinnacle of modernity. That same year, the Indigénat code was issued, a legal statute that made all the indigenous peoples of the vast French empire second-class citizens, without civic rights. That system of almost semi-slavery would not be abolished until 1946, after World War II.
To understand the background of the current revolt in New Caledonia, which has already caused six deaths, hundreds of injuries and multimillion-dollar damage to property, it is necessary to go back to the abuses suffered by the Canac population, present in this archipelago of Oceania since 1500 before Christ. The psychological wounds still fester.
Discovered by Captain James Cook, these islands 17,000 kilometers from Paris, in the Antipodes, have been under French control since 1853. The Canacs, who practiced polygamy and cannibalism, like other primitive communities, were decimated by imported diseases and the exploitation of the colonists, who ruthlessly suppressed their successive rebellions. There were deportations of tribal leaders to Polynesia, Africa or Indochina, forced labor in mines and abuse. The Canacs, confined to the mountains in a kind of reserves, almost disappeared.
The particularity of New Caledonia compared to other colonies is that, over time, the natives have become a minority, overwhelmed by the arrival of French from the metropolis and people from other Pacific islands and Asia .
The trigger for the latest crisis was a constitutional reform project that would deprive the Canacs of their current privilege of being overrepresented in the electoral census. This was one of the commitments assumed in the agreements of Matignon (1988) and Nouméa (1998) after the civil war between the Canacs and the Caldoches (whites). The Canacs, mostly supporters of independence, fear being relegated.
The pacification process of thirty years ago provided for three self-determination referendums, which were held between 2018 and 2021. No to independence won in all three, although the last one was boycotted by the Canacs. Many believe that the strange sequence of three popular consultations in a row was a mistake. Tempers have been exacerbated. No one thought what should be done if New Caledonia did not choose the path of sovereignty, especially when the majority of the local population wanted it. It was left to future talks between the communities, with the arbitration of Paris, but the dialogue has stalled and is even more difficult after the revolt.
The protagonists of the riots are very young, from the capital area, many drunk or under the influence of drugs, who have lost their ancestral ties with tribal clans. They are the result of a decaying society and the contrast between levels of life. The conflict over the electoral census has served as a simple fuse for the explosion of anger and violence. Something similar happens in other overseas territories and in the metropolis itself, shaken by frequent almost insurrectionary situations, such as the one experienced at the beginning of last summer after the death of a young man in Nanterre in a traffic control .
One of the causes of the discontent is also the difficult situation of the nickel industry, of which New Caledonia has around 25% of the world’s reserves. The price of the metal plummeted last year due to rising Indonesian production. Thousands of jobs are at risk.
Although it only has 270,000 inhabitants and an area slightly larger than half of Catalonia, New Caledonia generates attraction, not only because of the nickel. Its position is strategic in the South Pacific, a two-hour flight from Australia. For France, which still considers itself a global power, including the Asia-Pacific region, it is important to retain these islands for the projection they give to the area, where they have French Polynesia, Mayotte (another enclave very unstable) and the Meeting. These last islands have full departmental status within the Republic.
The Kanak independenceists, some of whom, during the USSR, studied in Moscow, enjoy sympathy and support in other micro-states in Oceania, some of which – Vanuatu, Fiji and Solomon – are already under the influence of China, which keep an eye on the events. Even Azerbaijan supports them, to take revenge for the pro-Armenian attitude of Paris.
The conservative newspaper Le Figaro, in yesterday’s editorial, bet on trying to keep New Caledonia because “with it France has an ace under the magna in the game of nations”. No self-criticism or allusion to the colonial legacy that poisons the conflict.
