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In 1695, the Scottish parliament set out to establish a colony in Central America, in an attempt to transform Scotland into a great trading nation. It was the dream of William Paterson, founder of the bank of England and erratic genius, who saw this colony as "the door of the seas...the key of the universe" and a bridge between east and west.

Three years later, the whole enterprise collapsed: 2,000 colonists lay dead and half of Scotland's wealth had been lost. The Darien venture was one of the most harrowing disasters to befall any nation, and the forced parliamentary union with England in 1707 was the bitter consummation of those who had dreamed of creating a Scottish empire. ... Read more

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2 months and my order has not arrived!
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This digital document is an article from The Australian Journal of Politics and History, published by University of Queensland Press on September 1, 2000. The length of the article is 1053 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The People Trade: Pacific Island Labourers and New Caledonia, 1865-1930.(Review) (book review)
Author: Clive Moore
Publication: The Australian Journal of Politics and History (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 2000
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Volume: 46Issue: 3Page: 434

Article Type: Book Review

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For French criminologists and colonialists of the mid-nineteenth century, the penal colonies of Guiana and New Caledonia seemed to satisfy two needs, namely, to incarcerate a growing number of criminals and to supply manpower for these developing colonies. But were these two goals not contradictory? Was the primary purpose of the penal colonies to punish or to colonize? In the prisons, inmates found means of subversion, guards resisted militaristic discipline, and camp commanders fought physicians for authority. Back in the metropole, journalistic exposés catered to the public’s fascination with the penal colonies’ horror and exoticism.

An understanding of modern France is not complete without an examination of this institution, which existed for more than a century and imprisoned more than one hundred thousand people. Stephen A. Toth invites readers to experience the prisons firsthand. Through a careful analysis of criminal case files, administrative records, and prisoner biographies, Toth reconstructs life in the penal colonies and examines how the social sciences, tropical medicine, and sensational journalism evaluated and exploited the inmates’ experiences. In exploring the disjuncture between the real and the imagined, he moves beyond mythic characterizations of the penal colonies to reveal how power, discipline, and punishment were construed and enforced in these prison outposts. ... Read more

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According to the poet Victor Hugo, the year 1870/71 was France's année terrible. The country suffered a humiliating defeat by the Prussian military, and Parisians endured a cruel siege. In the wake of the siege, Paris exploded and revolutionaries proclaimed the birth of the Paris Commune.

The conservative government of the young Third Republic portrayed the Communards as savage destroyers of civilization. The Communards were depicted as plagued by original sin, the evil nature of fallen man, and atavistic degeneration. These alleged traits aligned them with tribal peoples who were commonly thought to be severed from justice, liberty, and divine love. The punishment of the Communards was an odd one; some 4,500 revolutionaries were exiled to the South Pacific colony of New Caledonia with the hope that the inherent truths of nature would instill in their minds a natural morality.

However, the French government had not sufficiently considered the presence of the indigenous people of these "wilderness islands," the Melanesian Kanak. If the Communards were to be moralized by New Caledonia, how was it that the Kanak-who had lived for thousands of years on this land-did not also profit from this moralizing influence? This was just the first paradox provoked by the deportation of Parisian "political savages" to the land of these "natural savages." The surprising parallels and interactions between the Melanesians and the Parisians in their confrontation with the forces of French civilization form the substance of this book. It explores such themes as the history of the self, moralization as a means to civilization, nostalgia as a fatal illness, and colonial humanitarianism and gendered hybridity.

The French attempt to impose a universal moral standard and a particular form of "civilized self" on Communards and Kanak provoked fearsome battles, acerbic rhetorical inversions and fictional re-visionings through which oppositional identities and non-civilized "selves" took on form and solidity. This book places moral imperialism within the context of French republicanism and points to the beginnings of an era (the 1910s) when the recognition, rather than the domination, of the other attained an honored place in French theory. ... Read more

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Jean-Marie Tjibaou is arguably the most important post-World War II Oceanic leader. His intellectual abilities, acute understanding of both Melanesian and European civilizations, stature as a statesman, commitment to nonviolence, and vision for Melanesia's potential contributions to the global community have all contributed to the creation of a remarkable and enduring legacy. Until now, no substantial English-language study has existed of Tjibaou, who was assassinated in 1989. This intellectual biography of the Kanak (New Caledonia) leader takes an essentially chronological approach to his life -- from his beginnings in the mountains of northern New Caledonia and his studies at the Sorbonne to his leadership of the independence movement in the Territory. The work focuses on the spiritual, cultural, and intellectual sources of Tjibaou's ideas and actions as well as on those who were a source of inspiration to him.

Particular attention is given to Tjibaou's sense of service, the convergences and divergences he identified as existing between Melanesian and Western civilizations, and the impact of metropolitan French politics on the situation in the Territory. In addition, the book explores the fracture between the Grande Terre and the Loyalty Islands, one with deep historical roots that help explain why Tjibaou's assassin, Djubelly Wéa, was not a "crazy fanatic" but the product of a distinctive reality--with a very different cultural and political reading of New Caledonia's destiny. ... Read more