° Chesterfield Islands ° New Caledonia ° Loyalty Islands
From about the 11th century Polynesians also arrived and mixed with the populations of the archipelago.
Europeans first sighted New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands in the late 18th century. The British explorer James Cook sighted Grande Terre in 1774 and named it New Caledonia, Caledonia being the Latin name for Scotland. During the same voyage he also named the islands to the north of New Caledonia the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), after the islands north of Scotland.
The first American whaler to come in New Caledonia waters was the Britannia in November 1793. This ship would have discovered the island named then Britania, and today known as Maré (Loyalty Is.). In 1806, this 300 tons ship grounded on the " Elisabeth reef " located North of Lord Howe.
Whalers operated off New Caledonia during the 19th century. Sandalwood traders were welcome but as supplies diminished, the traders became abusive. The Europeans brought new diseases such as smallpox, measles, dysentery, influenza, syphilis and leprosy. Many people died as a result of these diseases. Tensions developed into hostilities and in 1849 the crew of the Cutter were killed and eaten by the Pouma clan. American whalers were dominant in the South Pacific until France annexed New Caledonia in the 1840s. Whaling was mostly concentrated around the Chesterfield reefs West of New Caledonia and, to a lesser extent to the North of Grande Terre and Loyalty islands.
About fifty American whalerss (identified by Robert Langsom from their log books) have been recorded in the region (Grande Terre, Loyalty Is., Walpole and Hunter) between 1793 and 1887. They were particularly hunting there between 1835 and 1860. The Chesterfield reefs are not explicitly mentioned in the records but perhaps they were not considered as being French (France annexed them on 15th June 1878).
In general, whalerswere in New Caledonia seas between July and December with the peak season in August and September. However the William Hamilton, which came in 1839 and 1841, was there in February and March. This whaler rescued some European sailors and Father Channel assistants after this priest murder in Futuna, on 27th April 1840.
French whalers started hunting in Oceania in 1835 when the Gustave, a 480 tons ship armed in the Havre in 1835, hunted in New Caledonia in the late 1800s in the Arama area, hoping to find whales between Balabio island and the Grande Terre, without success.
The Winslow worked together with the Gustave during several weeks in 1863. The Gustave was badly damaged in the Okhotsk sea and had to be sunk in Tahiti on 15th January 1866. The Winslow caught 21 whales in 3 month NW of New Caledonia. A 637 tons ship, she was built in Paimboeuf and launched on 12th April 1852. She was not the biggest whaler built in France but probably the one receiving the most numerous improvements.
American whaling ships ceased to come in 1887.
As trade in sandalwood declined it was replaced by a new form of trade, Blackbirding. Blackbirding was a euphemism for enslaving people from New Caledonia, the Loyalty Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands to work in sugar cane plantations in Fiji and Queensland. The trade ceased at the start of the 20th century. The victims of this trade were called Kanakas, a label later shortened to Kanak and adopted by the indigenous population after French annexation.
The island was made a French possession in late 1853 in an attempt by Napoleon III to rival the British colonies in Australia and New Zealand. Following the example set by the British in nearby Australia, between 1864 and 1922 France sent a total of 22,000 convicted felons to penal colonies along the south-west coast of the island; this number includes regular criminals as well as political prisoners such as Parisian socialists and Kabyle nationalists. Towards the end of the penal colony era, free European settlers (including former convicts) and Asian contract workers by far out-numbered the population of forced workers. The indigenous Kanak populations declined drastically in that same period due to introduced diseases and an apartheid-like system called Code de l'Indigénat which imposed severe restrictions on their livelihood, freedom of movement and land ownership.
During World War II, US and Allies forces built a major position in New Caledonia to combat the advance of Japan in South-East Asia and toward Australia. Noumea served as a headquarters for the United States military in the Pacific. The proximity of the territory with the South Pacific operations permitted also quick repairs in Noumea of damaged US ships. The American 23rd Infantry Division is still unofficially named Americal, the name being a contraction of "America" and "New Caledonia".
The U.S. military headquarters - a pentagonal complex - was, after the war, taken over as the base for a new regional intergovernmental development organisation: the South Pacific Commission, later known as the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.
New Caledonia has been on a United Nations list of non-self-governing territories since 1986. Agitation by the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak Socialiste (FLNKS) for independence began in 1985. The FLNKS (led by the late Jean-Marie Tjibaou, assassinated in 1989) advocated the creation of an independent state of 'Kanaky'. The troubles culminated in 1988 with a bloody hostage taking in Ouvéa. The unrest led to agreement on increased autonom
Settled by both Britain and France during the first half of the 19th century, the island was made a French possession in 1853. It served as a penal colony for four decades after 1864. Agitation for independence during the 1980s and early 1990s ended in the 1998 Noumea Accord, which over a period of 15 to 20 years will transfer an increasing amount of governing responsibility from France to New Caledonia. The agreement also commits France to conduct as many as three referenda between 2013 and 2018, to decide whether New Caledonia should assume full sovereignty and independence.
