La France australe : From Dream Through Failure to Compromise

Abstract

In the seventeenth century Paulmier and Sainte-Marie dreamt of taking Christianity to the Southern Continent. In the late eighteenth century Peyroux advocated une nouvelle in Van Diemen's land, and Marion Du Fresne's expedition took possession of la France australe (New Zealand) in the name of Louis XV. But the French government was not yet listening. The Picpus Fathers came to the Eastern Pacific in 1827, the first Marists arrived in Oceanie Occidentale ten years later. In 1839, the French government began to move. It decided to set up a French consulate in Sydney. Actively looking for a military base, a settler colony and a convict settlement of its own, it chose the South Island of New Zealand. However, the French arrived there several months after the British had established sovereignty over the whole of New Zealand. Some, but not all, of the French government's aims were satisfied in the Marquesas Islands and then in Tahiti and New Caledonia. Naval officers involved in the New Zealand vent...