A flippant expose of the country and people hosting the Paris Olympic Games. Senior Correspondent Mike Osborne dons a Jean Paul Gaultier sailor’s cap and cruises to the South Pacific.
Surfing at the 2024 Paris Olympics is being held at the famous Teahupo’o barrel break on the historic island of Tahiti in French Polynesia.
Australia’s former world champion Tyler Wright, along with Ethan Ewing and Jack Robinson are into the quarter-finals at the picturesque French territory.
But France has never been a popular or trusted South Pacific resident.
French colonisation brought wars, penal settlements, slavery and cultural suppression to the region, as well as nuclear tests at Mururoa and the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior Greenpeace ship in New Zealand.
While tourist magnets including Tahiti, New Caledonia and Vanuatu now trumpet their French connections, their colonial histories along with many neighbours begin with English navigator James Cook.
The first of Cook’s three voyages in 1769 was funded by England’s Royal Society of eminent scientists to observe the transit of Venus across the sun from Tahiti, before venturing further in search of the mystery southern land. While there, Cook, then a Lieutenant, named the archipelago around Tahiti the Society Islands in honour of his journey’s sponsor.
On his second voyage in 1774 Cook landed in what is now Vanuatu and called that group of islands The New Hebrides after the Scottish Hebrides archipelago.
While on the same journey he became the first European explorer to reach New Caledonia, named because the island reminded him of his father’s native Scotland.
Cook was followed into the Pacific by French navigator Antoine de Bruni, chevalier d’Entrecasteaux, in 1793 and thereafter the New Hebrides and New Caledonia became important to French and British whaling, plantations, the sandalwood trade and blackbirding, the euphemism for capturing slave labour to work Queensland’s cane plantations.
Tahiti meanwhile became the scene for the Mutiny on the Bounty when English sailor Fletcher Christian led an uprising against Captain William Bligh in 1789 while wearing a rather fashionable hat. Then in 1835 the island was visited by famous English naturalist Charles Darwin during his voyage of discovery on the HMS Beagle.
A few years later in 1843 Tahiti and the Society Islands were declared a French protectorate to keep settlers from France safe. A short war broke out against the Queen of Tahiti which ended in 1847, after which the local French reign put an end to any British influence in what subsequently became known as French Polynesia.
Tahiti’s tropical vegetation and beautiful young girls lured French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin to the island for two years from 1891-93, during which time he famously painted many local women in repose and at play.
Over 50 years later the award-winning Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific was staged on Broadway. It’s based on American writer’s James A Michener Pulitzer Prize-winning book Tales of the South Pacific, set in Tahiti and Vanuatu during World War II.
France took possession of New Caledonia in 1853 to use as a penal colony for over 30 years from 1864-1897. When nickel was discovered the French began mining the metal but the industry caused several violent outbreaks among the indigenous Kanak population who were excluded from mining operations.
During World War II New Caledonia declared loyalty to its former French oppressors. They supported the exiled free French government and expelled the German-controlled pro-Vichy governor. The capital Noumea also became an important Allied naval base for the US South Pacific Fleet that ultimately defeated the Japanese in the Battle of the Coral Sea.
Despite a number of referendums over the past six years, New Caledonia has always voted to remain a part of France. But local pro-independence Kanaks are not happy claiming the last referendum in 2021 was boycotted by many indigenous people because of the Covid pandemic.
They are also upset with the French government moving ahead with plans to ease rules around how long people need to live in New Caledonia to become a citizen, which will increase the number of non-indigenous voters. France had to impose a 6pm to 6am curfew to stop recent riots over the constitutional reforms.
Meanwhile, the New Hebrides, later Vanuatu, remained largely lawless despite being jointly controlled by France and Britain through much of the 19th and 20th centuries, with the economy supported by coffee, banana and coconut European-controlled plantations.
The islands retained a mostly French influence and, like New Caledonia, became an important base for the Allies fighting the Japanese in the Pacific during World War II. When the war ended, the US decided it was too expensive to ship all its equipment back home, so offered to sell it to the French in Vanuatu for six cents in the dollar.
The French refused to pay, believing the US would simply abandon the gear and they would ultimately get it all for free. To spite the French, US troops tipped all the gear off a cliff into the sea near their base, creating what is now a snorkelling and diving tourist attraction called Million Dollar Point.
After WWII, new industries including cattle, commercial fishing and manganese mining boosted the local economy and a strong independence movement against the joint French and British rule resulted in the creation of the Republic of Vanuatu in 1980.
That left France with New Caledonia, French Polynesia and the tiny remote Pacific territories of Wallis and Futuna with a 11,000 population, and the uninhabited Clipperton Island off the coast of Central America.
France decided to really test the South Pacific friendship by conducting nuclear bomb tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in French Polynesia from 1966-96. Environmental groups including Greenpeace went ballistic, along with 13 South Pacific nations including Australia and NZ who signed the Treaty of Rarotonga, declaring the region nuclear-free.
In retaliation against Greenpeace protests over nuclear testing, French intelligence agencies authorised an act of bastardry and sunk the organisation’s flagship Rainbow Warrior anchored in Auckland Port in July 1985, resulting in the death of a photographer. A mushroom cloud of international condemnation rained down.
France initially denied responsibility but NZ authorities captured two French agents, which humiliated French President Francois Mitterrand. NZ Prime Minister David Lange declared it an act of state-sponsored terrorism and France was forced to kowtow, apologise and pay reparations to the photographer’s family, Greenpeace and NZ.
Not surprisingly France remained a detested force in the Pacific until 1996 when it ended nuclear testing and started becoming more engaged and benevolent towards its territories and other countries in the region.
A visit to the region by President Emmanuel Macron in 2023 – the first by any French President – was aimed at tempering the rising influence of China in the Pacific and re-assuring island nations that France was supporting calls for action on climate change.
France also retains almost 3,000 military personnel across New Caledonia and French Polynesia with plans to beef-up security in Tahiti during the Olympic surfing competition.
NOTE – This is the latest in a series of “Frivolous facts about France for Olympic bon vivants”. You can read other Frivolous Facts stories by clicking on these topics: Language, French Inventions, Olympic History.
Michael Osborne has been a journalist for more than four decades including 35 years with the national news agency Australian Associated Press, rising from junior reporter to Editor.
He was AAP Editor for 11 years and served four years as Head of Sport and Racing. He was also posted to London and Beijing as AAP’s Bureau Chief and Foreign Correspondent.
He has worked at six Olympics and five Commonwealth Games, covered tennis grand slams, golf majors, international cricket, rugby world cups and numerous sporting world championships. He also co-ordinated and managed AAP’s teams and coverage at three Olympic Games in Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012.
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