Ebook: The Totem and the Tricolour: A Short History of New Caledonia Since 1774

On 2 December 1984, Jean-Marie Tjibaou inaugurated the provisional government of the independent state of Kanaky. Four days later, two of his brothers as well as seven other Kanaks were shot down in an ambush in the north of New Caledonia. The Kanak insurrection of 1984 thrust this tiny French territory into the world’s headlines.

The Totem and the Tricolour examines the historical background to the present crisis in New Caledonia, one of France's last remaining overseas possessions, and one of the last territories in the Pacific still denied independent status. It considers the earliest contacts between Kanaks and Europeans, pagans and missionaries, which had catastrophic consequences for the native Melanesians. They were driven off their land, their cultural life disintegrated, their population suffered a holocaust. However, they were never passive victims; the anti-colonial insurrection of 1878 is a significant historical precedent for today's independentists.

The author documents French humamtariamsm, neglect and greed - the good the bad and the ugly of the colonial experience. He suggests that the complexion of the ruling majority in Paris - Gaullist, Giscardien or socialist - has profoundly affected the territory's recent history, and argues that formidable obstacles still remain on New Caledonia's long, hard road to independence.