Editing New Caledonia (section)

=== French colonisation ===
{{further| Communards#Life in New Caledonia}}
{{Anchor|French colonisation}}On 24 September 1853, under orders from Emperor [[Napoleon III]], Admiral [[Auguste Febvrier Despointes|Febvrier Despointes]] took formal possession of New Caledonia. Captain [[Louis-Marie-François Tardy de Montravel]] founded [[Port-de-France]] (Nouméa) on 25 June 1854.<ref name="ped"/> A few dozen free settlers settled on the west coast in the following years.<ref name="ped"/> New Caledonia became a [[penal colony]] in 1864, and from the 1860s until the end of the transportations in 1897, France sent about 22,000 criminals and political prisoners to New Caledonia. The {{lang|fr|Bulletin de la Société générale des prisons}} for 1888 indicates that 10,428 convicts, including 2,329 freed ones, were on the island as of 1 May 1888, by far the largest number of convicts detained in French overseas penitentiaries.{{refn|group=nb|As compared to 4,053 convicts, including 1,176 freed ones, in French Guiana at the same date.<ref>{{cite book |title=Bulletin de la Société générale des prisons |place=Paris |year=1888 |page=980 }}</ref>}} The convicts included many [[Communards#Life in New Caledonia|Communards]], arrested after the failed [[Paris Commune]] of 1871, including [[Victor Henri Rochefort, Marquis de Rochefort-Luçay|Henri de Rochefort]] and [[Louise Michel]].<ref name="gb-1">{{cite book |first1=Robert |last1=Aldrich |first2=John |last2=Connell |title=France's Overseas Frontier: Départements et territoires d'outre-mer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vRB3woPa7LAC&pg=PA46 |year=2006 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-0-521-03036-6 |page=46 |via=Google Books |access-date=18 October 2015 |archive-date=6 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200806165048/https://books.google.com/books?id=vRB3woPa7LAC&pg=PA46 |url-status=live }}</ref> Between 1873 and 1876, 4,200 political prisoners were "relegated" to New Caledonia.<ref name="ped"/> Only 40 of them settled in the colony; the rest returned to France after being granted amnesty in 1879 and 1880.<ref name="ped"/>

[[File:King Jacques and his Queen.jpg|thumb|Chief&nbsp;King Jacques and his Queen, from ''The Romance of the South Seas'', Clement Lindley Wragge, Chatto & Windus, 1906.]]
In 1864, [[nickel]] was discovered<ref name="gb-1"/> on the banks of the [[Diahot River]]; with the establishment of the {{lang|fr|[[Société Le Nickel]]|italic=np}} in 1876, mining began in earnest.<ref name="gb-2"/> To work the mines the French imported labourers from neighbouring islands and from the New Hebrides, and later from [[Japan]], the [[Dutch East Indies]], and [[French Indochina]].<ref name="gb-1"/> The French government also attempted to encourage European immigration, without much success.<ref name="gb-1"/>

The indigenous [[Kanak people]] were excluded from the French economy and from mining work, and ultimately confined to reservations.<ref name="gb-1"/> This sparked a violent reaction in 1878, when High Chief {{ill|Ataï|fr}} of [[La Foa]] managed to unite many of the central tribes and launched a guerrilla war that killed 200 Frenchmen and 1,000 Kanaks.<ref name="gb-2"/> A {{Interlanguage link|1917 Kanak revolt| lt=second uprising|fr|Révolte kanak de 1917|WD=}} occurred in 1917, with Protestant missionaries like [[Maurice Leenhardt]] functioning as witnesses to the events of this war. Leenhardt would pen a number of ethnographic works on the Kanak of New Caledonia. Noël of Tiamou led the 1917 rebellion, which resulted in a number of orphaned children, one of whom was taken into the care of Protestant missionary Alphonse Rouel. This child, Wenceslas Thi, would become the father of [[Jean-Marie Tjibaou]]<ref>Adrian Muckle</ref> (1936–1989).

Europeans brought new diseases such as [[smallpox]] and [[measles]], which caused the deaths of many natives.<ref name="logan"/> The Kanak population declined from around 60,000 in 1878 to 27,100 in 1921, and their numbers did not increase again until the 1930s.<ref name="gb-2"/>