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From the late 1970s Australian governments (led in turn by Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke) expected New Caledonia to become independent. France responded with suspicion. From 1983, however, reformist...

The conflict over French nuclear testing in the South Pacific has dominated discussion of Australia’s relations with France while Gough Whitlam was Prime Minister (December 1972 to November 1975). Nonetheless, other issues were also important. To an extent not previously appreciated, Whitlam took a very positive view of France, despite his opposition to French nuclear testing. He understood the implications for Australian interests of France’s leading role in Western Europe, notably with respect to trade access, and was attracted by French scientific and industrial expertise. He was open to possible French involvement in uranium enrichment in Australia, and to Australian participation in the French/European Airbus aviation project. The French government reciprocated Whitlam’s interest in closer engagement. His efforts to establish stronger relations with France (and Europe), though unsuccessful, provide a further example of his commitment to greater independence for Australia from its traditional ...

In the decade or so from 1941, Australian military officers and government officials paid some attention, for the first time, to the Melanesians of New Caledonia. Their comments illuminate Australian attitudes in that period, and offer perspectives on a significant stage in the history of New Caledonia, in terms particularly of the partial enfranchisement of the Melanesians.

From 1945, consistent with its broader South Pacific ambitions, Australia sought to strengthen its economic position in New Caledonia. The leaders of the European-descended ‘Caledonian’ community wanted economic autonomy for the territory and improved trade with Australia. Yet the opportunity proved illusory. France remained committed to imperial preference and economic dominance. Its revival was underwritten by Marshall Plan aid, including in New Caledonia. Australia failed to provide enough of the coal that appeared to offer economic influence. In the 1950s the Melanesians gained the vote, and the Caledonians lost political power. Conservative governments in Australia showed less interest than their Labor predecessors. Australia would have welcomed an economically autonomous New Caledonia with close Australian links, but this idea clashed with France's centralist and unitary traditions. In the tension between New Caledonia's geography and its history, France had ensured that history won.

(1993). An achilles heel? Australian and New Zealand capabilities for Pacific Islands contingencies. The Pacific Review: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 127-143.

How can one ‘decolonise’ oneself? How far did taking part in institutional politics help emancipate the Melanesian population of New Caledonia, as most of its members experienced a process of trans...

Henningham Stephen. France and the South Pacific in the 1980s : an Australian perspective. In: Journal de la Société des océanistes, 92-93, 1991-1-2. pp. 21-45.

Over the next few years, in the virtual absence of external and intraregional military threats, domestically-focused and primarily ‘nonmilitary’ security issues are likely to preoccupy the Pacific island states. These issues include economic uncertainties, environmental degradation, law and order problems, internal unrest, and, in some instances, secessionist movements. The presence of some of these challenges to security will reflect in part the intractable problems of social and economic development which have emerged in several island states over the last decade or so. In some circumstances these various issues, though primarily domestic in focus, will have implications for regional affairs.

The constraints on Australian and New Zealand influence in the Pacific islands region have also been reflected in the development of their attitudes to, and policies on possible military intervention in, the island states. On several occasions since 1980 Australian or New Zealand forces have stood ready to intervene or have intervened in parts of the region. In August-September 1980 Australia provided logistical and communications support, including the provision of twenty loan personnel, to assist the Papua New Guinea defence force, which was acting on behalf of the government of newly-independent Vanuatu, to quell a secessionist revolt on the island of Espiritu Santo.2 Later in the decade the question of intervention again arose in response to the Fiji coup in May 1987, to disturbances in Vanuatu in May 1988, and to the revolt in Bougainville from 1988 onwards. In late 1994 Australia and also New Zealand provided assistance to a multilateral Pacific islands peacekeeping force, which was tasked with maintaining order on Bougainville during peace talks.

In pre-colonial times, most Pacific islander communities were economically self-reliant and introspective. This was so despite trade, migration and warfare. According to one prominent Tuvaluan, ‘Ours was largely a struggle with the limitations of the environment — although once or twice we did need to keep an eye on exactly whose sail was on the horizon.’1 During the Second World War, however, some of the Pacific islands ‘provided the battleground’, and their populations found themselves ‘caught by the inescapable tides of global politics.’2 Nowadays, the island states are directly subject to global economic and political circumstances and trends. They are obliged to define and pursue their national interests in this broader context. In this chapter I review the external policy stances of the island states. I begin by reviewing general policy orientations, and then discuss sub-groupings of states, and individual states.

The positive external security circumstances of the island states have permitted their governments to define security broadly. Yet though free in recent decades of the threat or actuality of intra-regional armed conflict, as well as of serious direct external threats, the region has had no shortage of internal tensions and conflicts.

Over the last thirty-five years, the political map of the Pacific islands region has changed dramatically. During this period, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom relinquished control over almost all of their colonies. The Netherlands came to terms with Indonesia’s acquisition of Irian Jaya, and ceased to take part in Pacific islands affairs. The United States negotiated free association arrangements for some of its Pacific entities, while maintaining its sovereignty over others. France reluctantly accepted the transition of the New Hebrides to independence, but maintained control over three other entities, and from the late-1980s established itself as a significant player in regional affairs.

The Pacific Ocean was so named, it seems, because of its tranquillity when Magellan first sailed on it) But just as this ocean has its storms and cyclones, so too do the Pacific islands have a history of conflict and violence.

Australia — and, to some extent, New Zealand — have often been seen as wielding the weight and influence of great powers in their relations with the Pacific island states. And their importance in relation to the islands region has often been contrasted with their more modest profile in world affairs.

For many outsiders the phrase ‘the Pacific islands’ prompts confused images of swaying palms, sparkling lagoons, suns setting into tropical seas, and happy smiling ‘natives’. Beyond the picture postcard and tourist brochure images, however, the Pacific islands region is diverse and complex. Its main characteristics, with respect to the concerns of this volume, are as follows.

Robert Aldrich. The French Presence in the South Pacific, 1842–1940. London, Macmillan, 1990. xii + 387 pp. A$49.95 (cloth). Francis Terry McNamara. France in Black Africa. Washington, National Defence University, 1989. xx + 289 pp. US$8.00 (paper) David Robie. Blood on their Banner. Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific. Leichhardt, Pluto Press Australia, 1989. 310 pp. A$19.95 (paper).

FOR MOST OF THE 1980s, bitter conflicts punctuated by open violence characterized the politics of the small French Pacific territory of New Caledonia. Over forty people were killed and property damage ran into millions of dollars. But since mid-1988, more peaceful conditions have mainly been present. The turning point came on 26 June 1988, when Michel Rocard, the socialist prime minister of France, signed agreements with the representatives of the two main political blocs in New Caledonia, the Melanesian nationalists and their "loyalist" opponents. These agreements, along with others signed later that year, were endorsed by a national French referendum held in November 1988. The various agreements and associated legislation, which are generally known as the "Matignon Accords,"' have provided the framework for an interim settlement, planned to conclude in 1998 with a referendum on New Caledonia's constitutional future. With this settlement at its halfway mark, it is timely to examine developments so far and the responses to them. An examination is especially apt because 1993 was the international "Year of Indigenous Peoples," and because uncertainties over the settlement during the latter half of its projected span increased when the Socialist government lost office in the

In north India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries several great landed estates played a crucial part in the consolidation of imperial rule and in the support of the social and economic order. These estates have attracted considerable scholarly attention, but previous research has concentrated primarily on their relations with the colonial administraton and on their general intermediary role in north Indian society. The only study directly concerned with their internal affairs is Dr. P. J. Musgrave's ‘Landlords and Lords of the Land: Estate Management and Social Control in Uttar Pradesh 1860–1920’ (Modern Asian Studies, 6, 3 (1972), pp. 257–75), in which official sources are used as the basis for an account of the internal operations of the great estates in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. Hitherto the major obstacle to the examination of the administration of the great estates has been the absence of comprehensive estate records. Fortunately the extensive and well-organized archives of the Raj Darbhanga of Bihar recently have been opened to scholars. In this paper the Raj archives have been drawn upon to provide evidence for an account of the structure and operation of the administration of the Raj Darbhanga during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The paper argues that despite substantial difficulties the Raj Darbhanga effectively pursued its interests by means of a bureaucratic system of management and that therefore Dr Musgrave's conclusions concerning the limited power of the great landed estates need substantial qualification and correction.

Arvind N. Das (ed.), Agrarian Movements in India: Studies on 20th Century Bihar, The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3, Special Issue, London: Frank Cass, 1982. Pp. 152; also in hardback; £19.50. This review of a collection of studies of the turbulent Indian state of Bihar emphasises the need for a clearly defined unit of study and for an adequate analysis of social structure. The review examines the diversity of colonial era peasant movements, the importance of nationalism and communalism, and the contrast between the colonial and post‐colonial situations. The review also criticises the misleading presentation of the colonial era peasant leaders as committed radicals and comments that even nowadays the goals of peasant protest are generally reformist rather than radical.

This rejoinder refutes the assertions made by Dr Sengupta in his comments (The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol.12, No. 4, July 1985) on my review article on the Special Issue on ‘Agrarian Movements in Bihar’. It also argues that by failing to address squarely the issues raised in the review article, Dr Sengupta has conceded that the criticisms made are well founded.

John Connell. New Caledonia or Kanaky? The Political History of a French Colony. Canberra: National Centre for Development Studies, Australian National University, 1987. xx+493 pp. $25.00. Michael Spencer, Alan Ward and John Connell (eds). New Caledonia. Essays in Nationalism and Dependency. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1988. xv+253 pp.

W ITH THE FRENCH SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT elected in June 1988 implementing new policies in New Caledonia, and after the unrest of April/May 1988 which cost nearly thirty lives, the conflict in this group of one large and several small islands in the Southwest Pacific has attracted renewed outside interest. France does not welcome this attention. While their policies for New Caledonia are in contrast, both Left and Right in French politics regard the territory as France's internal problem. They resent criticisms of French policy, and regret that in 1986 the South Pacific Forum-the body representing the independent states of the Southwest Pacific-tabled the territory before the Decolonization Committee of the United Nations. But most of the countries of the Pacific Basin region have begged to differ with France. Although only a small entity (1983 population: 143,000), New Caledonia has economic, political and strategic significance. The territory has massive nickel reserves as well as chrome, iron and other minerals, is surrounded by a vast maritime exploitation zone, and lies close to lines of communication linking North Asia and North America with Australia, New Zealand and the island states of the Southwest Pacific. The unrest in the territory has provided openings for Libyan meddling, so far on a modest scale but with the potential to escalate should a solution prove elusive. Most Pacific countries expect New Caledonia to attain, sooner or later, some form of independence. While often prepared to acknowledge the difficulties facing France in New Caledonia, they also believe that the stability and stance of the new state will depend on the skill with which decolonization is handled. And the New Caledonian conflict, along with concerns over nuclear testing in French Polynesia, has soured France's relations with the small but proudly independent island states of the Southwest Pacific, which include Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, and Western Samoa. Over recent years French