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France’s Colonial Legacy in the Pacific: A Contemporary Crisis

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France’s Colonial Legacy in the Pacific: A Contemporary Crisis

Much attention has been paid to France’s relationship with New Caledonia in recent months, but France has also been compelled to address its colonial ties with its other great Pacific territory, French Polynesia. 

France’s Colonial Legacy in the Pacific: A Contemporary Crisis
Credit: Ryan Geller on Unsplash

There has been much reflecting on Pacific colonial legacies of late. With the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Apia, Samoa, from October 21, light harshly shone on the British imperial legacies of slavery. In particular, the question about how to make amends in the present for the resulting plethora of intergenerational harms and the mass concentration of wealth in Britain at the expense of colonized nations was painfully raised. 

Before Britain’s King Charles III ventured to Samoa to lead CHOGM, he was confronted in the Australian Parliament by an Indigenous MP who brought the brutal British history of dispossession that continues to roil Australia quite literally to the monarch’s face. The unfinished business of history has dogged the king on his Pacific trip as it did the 2022 royal tour of the Caribbean.

As little has been done beyond contrite statements to address the grievances raised, these historical legacies will undoubtedly continue to follow British royalty and the nation they represent. Instead, CHOGM showed how former colonial powers pivot away from the past and to the impending climate crisis and other looming challenges.

If Britain has been seared lately by its colonial past, France has had the blowtorch applied to its Pacific relationships. 

France has been forced to grapple with the challenge of how to remake its Pacific colonial ties into mutually beneficial relationships in the present. In May, New Caledonia’s capital, Noumea, exploded into deadly riots that were deeply rooted in history. The violence was costly in both monetary and reputational terms for France. Since the riots, Pacific voices have been raised predominantly in support of New Caledonian independence, and France has been taken to task for its anachronistic militarized response to the crisis. 

In an attempt to quell tensions, French President Emmanuel Macron abandoned the controversial trigger for the May riots: a constitutional amendment that would have expanded New Caledonia’s voter rolls in direct contravention of the 1998 Noumea Accord. The accord held that only those with continuous residence in New Caledonia prior to November 1998, or a parent who satisfied this criteria, were enfranchised for local elections. 

Further progress on addressing the crisis came in the form of a visit in October by newly appointed Overseas Affairs Minister François-Noël Buffet, under the prime ministership of Michel Barnier. Barnier and Buffet have indicated they wish to set a different course in France’s New Caledonia crisis, though as journalist Nic McLellan explained, Buffet’s support of the controversial legislation that sparked the riots is problematic. 

The new prime minister and his Overseas Affairs minister are placing a lot of store in the dialogue processes set in motion, though the critical issue of costs and who is going to bear them – France or New Caledonia – remains unresolved. 

Also lowering the temperature in tensions was the French High Court’s decision in late October to reverse the imprisonment of pro-independence activist Christian Tien, who had been incarcerated in France along with six other activists since June. The once-postponed Pacific Islands Forum fact-finding mission comprised of leaders from Fiji, Tonga, and the Solomon Islands got underway on October 27 and represents another step toward finding a constructive path forward.

While so much attention has been shone on France’s relationship with New Caledonia in recent months, Paris has also been compelled to address its colonial ties with its other great Pacific territory, French Polynesia. 

France’s third Pacific territory, Wallis and Futuna, has a different relationship again with France, though most of its population resides in New Caledonia (approximately 30,000) rather than its home islands (12,000). 

French Polynesia was showcased during the Paris Olympics in July and August 2024. Tahiti was the site of the surfing competition, which yielded the first Olympic gold medal awarded to a French Polynesian when local surfing champion, Kauli Vaast, won the men’s surfing competition. This gold medal was added to France’s medal tally even while stoking tremendous local pride in a demonstration of the duality of being French Polynesian and French at the same time.

Despite such recent displays of a smoothly functioning relationship between France and the vast territory it began controlling in 1842, Paris is once again being compelled to recalibrate these ties as a result of the ascent of pro-independence politicians in April 2023 elections. In the polls last year, 38 out of 57 assembly seats were won by pro-independence party Tavini Huiraatira, which went on to elect its candidate, Moetai Brotherson, to the presidency of French Polynesia in May 2023.

Brotherson is the son-in-law of veteran French Polynesian pro-independence politician Oscar Temaru. Temaru, who has served as French Polynesia’s president five times since 2004, built his pro-independence political brand through the searing anti-nuclear testing campaign that roiled and reshaped French Polynesia, and the wider Pacific region, over decades. 

France moved its nuclear testing program from Algeria to French Polynesia in 1966 and conducted 193 tests on Moruroa and Fangataufa Atolls until international outcry finally ended the program in 1996. The sinking of a Greenpeace vessel in Auckland Harbor in 1985 by French agents galvanized the anti-French nuclear testing movement across the Pacific and elevated Temaru as the movement’s figurehead in French Polynesia.

In response to the strengthening of the pro-independence movement flowing from the nuclear testing protests in the 1990s, France made numerous concessions and changes that enhanced self-governing instruments. Paris also made canny investments in services and Ma’ohi (Indigenous) arts and culture. While these investment secured France’s place in French Polynesia since the end of nuclear testing, they were a double-edged sword that also boosted the pro-independence cause. 

After Brotherson’s win in the 2023 election, France began accepting this unwanted shift. One indication of this was the reversal of France’s 10-year practice of leaving the room when the issue of French Polynesian decolonization was discussed at the United Nations’ Fourth Committee, the so-called empty-chair policy. When Brotherson addressed the Fourth Committee in 2023, he spoke before the French representative of the rationale for decolonization. Brotherson cited “the trans-generational damage” caused by nuclear testing, the need for “open, frank and dispassionate discussion about the future of our country,” and clearer language about ownership of French Polynesia’s natural resources, a highly significant issue given the looming age of deep sea mining (Brotherson supports a moratorium on deep-sea mineral exploitation). 

One year later, in October 2024, while New Caledonia loomed large at the Fourth Committee hearings, Brotherson joined “almost three score [i.e. 60] speakers” addressing decolonization in French Polynesia. Brotherson said that “after a decade of silence, France has initiated dialogue with its Territory… reaffirming its Government’s support for a transparent and peaceful decolonization process under U.N. scrutiny.” Brotherson sought clear milestones and timelines to be included in the resolution on French Polynesia decolonization.

Even before the eruption of protests in New Caledonia in May 2024, France was responding to the more charged pro-independence politics of French Polynesia, as Brotherson noted in his U.N. speech. In April, a three-person delegation of French senators traveled throughout the territory. Their 111-page report was released on October 9 and contained 22 propositions aimed at “promoting autonomy” and addressing better resource allocation and services across the five archipelagoes that make up French Polynesia.

The report noted that since the 2023 elections “the institutions” of French Polynesia now “mostly express a position in favor of the independence of the territory,” though there is division about what model or timeline for independence to adopt. The report explained that opinions vary between “immediate independence” or an independence envisaged after 10 or 15 years” or even a “shared sovereignty arrangement” between France and French Polynesia.

While noting this feeling, the report did not delve into factors underlying the desire to create distance with France. Yet it prominently cited the influence of “states, starting with Azerbaijan” that “seem to be seeking to play a role as a spur to detach French Polynesia from France.” Azerbaijan telegraphed its intention to undermine French colonialism in July 2023 by providing “political and material support to the independence movement in Polynesia,” the report claimed. 

The French government initially accused Azerbaijan of instigating the May riots in Noumea. Stoking these flames, a contingent of Tavini Huiraatira party members traveled to Azerbaijan to attend “the right to decolonize” conference in June. 

Instead of addressing other underlying pro-independence moves, the report’s 22 proposals focused on bettering ties and internal concerns. It advocated upping support to curb domestic violence and legal and administrative changes that would lessen the dominance of Tahiti in favor of other administrative centers in the four other archipelagoes of French Polynesia.

The scourge of the drug trade was also flagged as a multi-faceted challenge requiring changes to legal processes as well as the capacity to interdict ships at sea where French military assistance is invaluable. 

The report acknowledged the grievance that had been brewing since the announcement of France’s Indo-Pacific Strategy in 2022. Although the strategy cited territories in the Pacific and Indian Ocean as an essential foundation of France’s posture due to their vast maritime domain, natural and intellectual resources, strategic locations, and ecological value, the strategy was formulated without “sufficient involvement of Pacific communities.” The report proposed to engage French Polynesian authorities “in the definition and implementation of the Republic’s Indo-Pacific strategy going forward.”

While the report was thick and full of minute details, the most compelling argument it put forth for the maintenance of the strong bonds with France was put near the top: money. 

In 2023, French government spending in French Polynesia reached 1.764 billion euros, up 5 percent from 2022. Despite all the rationale for independence coming from deep or more recent colonial histories between France and French Polynesia, foregoing this funding and the government resources that come with it is the greatest brake on actioning the pro-independence agenda. 

Standards of living and services in French Polynesia outshine all other Pacific Island nations and territories. Such levels of financial support are difficult to replace without reconstituting a similar relationship with another donor nation that would likely exert its dominance in turn. The French government will no doubt continue to highlight the mutual benefits for France and French Polynesia of staying closely connected. 

For the people of French Polynesia, the topic of independence remains sensitive, and, despite the posture of the present government, it is controversial. Such conditions favor the status quo despite considerable deleterious French colonial legacies.