French Empire: 11. Pacific

Abstract

In the mid‐ and late 1800s, France acquired several colonies in the South Pacific: Tahiti and the other islands of French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Wallis and Futuna, as well as an interest in the Anglo‐French condominium of the New Hebrides. The French transported convicts to New Caledonia from the 1860s to the 1890s, but its major resource was and remains nickel. The myths of paradise found and lost endured in Tahiti, which gained new importance for France from the 1960s to the 1990s as a site for nuclear tests. France reluctantly acceded to independence for the New Hebrides in 1980, but the other islands remain French territories; a violent conflict between pro‐ and anti‐independence groups troubled New Caledonia in the 1980s.