While Paris is basking in the spotlight of the 33rd Olympiad, in the Pacific France is being pummeled. In its restive overseas territory of New Caledonia, France’s colonial history is literally being torched with the burning of some of the oldest Catholic churches over the past few days. The funneling of more military personnel and equipment into New Caledonia marks France’s ongoing response to over two months of violence that has seen 10 people killed and over 2 billion euro in damages. One of the five Kanak independence leaders transported to France for trial, Christian Téin, has declared himself a political prisoner.
In this third part of our series delving into the contemporary clashes between geopolitical tensions and historical legacies in the Pacific, we return to New Caledonia and look at the resurfacing histories and the paths forward to potentially resolve, albeit imperfectly, these Pacific pressure points.
France’s response to the New Caledonian tensions is out of time in 2024. It would be more plausible if had occurred during Paris’s first Olympiad in 1924 when anti-colonial convulsions, including in New Caledonia, rocked imperial capitals like Paris. One hundred years ago, imperial responses to colonial rule were consistently harsh and militarized, with trained personnel and equipment fresh from World War I repurposed to quell colonial hotspots in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.