The Establishment of a French Empire in Oceania

Abstract

In the fifty years from the 1840s to the 1880s France acquired an empire in Oceania. The takeovers gave France possession of one of the largest islands of the South Pacific, New Caledonia, and the most legendary, Tahiti. By the end of the period, French colonists had settled, commercial activities were underway, and France had established a presence within the region that made the nation competitive with its rivals. Yet the putting together of an Oceanic empire proceded haphazardly, with neither design nor particular enthusiasm in Paris. Compared with France’s other overseas territories acquired in the nineteenth century, Algeria and much of Western and Equatorial Africa, Madagascar and Indochina, the islands of the Pacific were distant and not particularly promising additions to what was later termed ‘greater France’. A Pacific lobby hardly existed in France, the islands enjoyed a mixed reputation, and the main focus of French expansion obviously lay elsewhere. The primary question, therefore, is how and why France conquered and then retained a considerable number of islands in the South Pacific.