Vive in a Different France: New Caledonia
July 26th 2006 01:19
Bonjour tout le monde!
For most travellers from Australia, who can’t afford to travel Europe, but want to have the French experience, New Caledonia is the next best thing. Today’s post will focus mainly on this country’s history and formation.
Before I move on, I need to clarify something in yesterday’s post. I wrote that New Caledonia is a DOM, which makes it part of France. In fact, this is wrong. In France, New Caledonia is a TOM (you can see how I made the mistake): a Territoire d’Outre Mer. It shares many characteristics with a DOM, but a TOM is more independent than a DOM because the country has its own government.
This is New Caledonia's official emblem. (this picture is licensed under the Creative Commons 1.0 Agreement and has been released for public use. The original picture can be found at www.cyberflags.com)
Now, a bit of history. New Caledonia was first sighted by Europeans in the late 18th century. Captain James Cook saw the islands in 1774 and named the place New Caledonia. Caledonia is a Latin word, which was used by the Romans to indicate the area occupied by modern Scotland. When I first heard this, I was very confused. Why would someone be reminded of Scotland when travelling through the Pacific Ocean? Apparently, the purple coloured mountains on the island reminded him of Scottish mountains, and thus, New Caledonia was born.
The country actually had a rough start. Europeans became interested in opening trade routes with New Caledonia, using alcohol and tobacco to barter. They started to cheat the country with unfair trades and swaps. Contact also introduced many diseases to the nation including measles, small pox and the flu. Blackbirding then became a new trend: a process where people were taken from New Caledonia and surrounding islands and forced to work as slaves on farms in Fiji and Queensland. Missionaries who arrived next eradicated many indigenous practices, which were seen as immoral.
The French took control in 1853, so Napoleon III could rival British colonies in the region. He began to send convicts there in 1854, a practice which remained until 1922.
After WWII, France had the second biggest empire behind Great Britain and when her colonies began to ask for independence, the government was very slow to react. The status of New Caledonia and other such places, including Reunion, French Polynesia and Guadeloupe, is very ambiguous. The terms DOM and TOM were invented in 1946, after the Second World War to mirror this process of decolonisation. New Caledonia became a TOM in 1946 and was now part of the French Republic.
From then until the present day, the issue of independence has been very controversial in New Caledonia. This issue is very important and might be the topic of another post.
That’s it for today. See you tomorrow!
À demain
Melinda
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