Editing Tahiti (section)

=== Later 19th century ===

During the same period about a thousand Chinese, mainly [[Cantonese]], were recruited at the request of a plantation owner in Tahiti, William Stewart, to work on the great cotton plantation at Atimaono. When the enterprise resulted in bankruptcy in 1873, some Chinese workers returned to their country, but a large number stayed in Tahiti and mixed with the population.

In 1866 the district councils were formed, elected, which were given the powers of the traditional hereditary chiefs. In the context of the republican assimilation, these councils tried their best to protect the traditional way of life of the local people, which was threatened by European influence.{{citation needed|date=January 2015}}

[[File:Tahitian schoolchildren, by Coulon.jpg|thumb|upright|Tahitian children, c.{{nbsp}}1906]]

In 1877, Queen Pōmare died after ruling for fifty years. Her son, Pōmare V, then succeeded her on the throne. The new king seemed little concerned with the affairs of the kingdom, and when in 1880 the governor Henri Isidore Chessé, supported by the Tahitian chiefs, pushed him to abdicate in favour of France, he accepted. On 29 June 1880, he ceded Tahiti to France along with the islands that were its dependencies. He was given the titular position of Officer of the Orders of the [[Legion of Honour]] and [[Mérite agricole|Agricultural Merit of France]]. Having become a colony, Tahiti thus lost all sovereignty. Tahiti was nevertheless a special colony, since all the subjects of the Kingdom of Pōmare would be given French citizenship.<ref>Law of 30 December 1880, Messager de Tahiti, 25 March 1881</ref> On 14 July 1881, among cries of "Vive la République!" the crowds celebrated the fact that Polynesia now belonged to France; this was the first celebration of the Tiurai (national and popular festival). In 1890, Pape{{okina}}ete became a commune of the Republic of France.

The French painter [[Paul Gauguin]] lived on Tahiti in the 1890s and painted many Tahitian subjects. [[Papeari]] has a small Gauguin museum.

In 1891 [[Matthew Turner (shipbuilder)|Matthew Turner]], an American shipbuilder from San Francisco who had been seeking a fast passage between the city and Tahiti, built {{ship||Papeete|schooner|2}}, a two-masted [[schooner]] that made the trip in seventeen days.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gibbs |first=Jim |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1242 |publisher=Superior Publishing Company |title=West Coast windjammers in story and pictures |date=1968 |isbn=0-517-17060-4 |edition=1st |location=Seattle |pages=42 |oclc=1242}}</ref>