French Oceania

France in the pacific ocean

They have been dust of islands and archipelagoes which constitute our establishments of the Pacific, this ocean which took, for one half-century, such a great importance.
One finds there New Caledonia and the Establishments of Oceania, with the Franco-British Condominium of New Hebrides.

New Caledonia

New Caledonia is a rare example of French colonization and settlement in territories overseas. It is a very mountainous ground, glaze mainly of pastures and forests.

Fifty thousand inhabitants, of which the half are the Kanak ones, in 1948, live on a surface of 20,000 square kilometers. This country is famous for its moderate and salubrious climate making it possible to European to manually work there… One cultivates there the coffee, cotton and the coconut. On the coasts, one fishes mother-of-pearl (worry). The basement is very rich in nickel, chromium and cobalt. New Caledonia comes to the second rank, after Canada, of the nickel producing countries.
Noumea, its chief town, is also the main port. Depend administratively on New Caledonia: islands of Loyalty, of the Pines, Futuna and Wallis, and finally New Hebrides, placed under the mode curious about the Franco-British Condominium.

New Hebrides

New Hebrides, whose climate is unhealthy, lend themselves to the rich cultures, but the penetration inside is difficult because of the hostility of certain still wild and anthropophagous tribes. The Archipelago hébridais understands about forty islands, summits of a vast collapsed volcanic plate. It covers a surface of 15,000 square kilometers, populated few 50,000 inhabitants, of which a population of more than 40,000 hearts of Polynesians (in 1948).

French Settlements in Oceania

Our French establishments of Oceania, become from French Polynesia, sung formerly by Parcelled out Pierre, are composed of a hundred small islands disseminated in the Pacific and grouped in archipelagoes whose principal ones are the Company, Tuamotu and Gambier. PAPEETE, chief town and main port of the island of Tahiti, count only 12,000 inhabitants. True terrestrial paradise by the softness of the climate and the wealth of the vegetation, all tropical agricultures: banana tree, vanilla, copra succeed there very well. In water, one fishes oysters with mother-of-pearl and oysters pearl-bearing.