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Just how the Polynesian peoples came
to populate their islands of the Pacific is a subject of some debate. What
is clear, however, is that they were great sailors and navigators who
traversed vast distances of open ocean to settle as far and wide as
present-day French Polynesia, Hawaii, New Zealand, parts of the New Guinea
island, Tonga and the Cook Islands. It's thought that they left South-East
Asia around 3000 or 4000 years ago and began to arrive in present-day
French Polynesia around 300 AD. Islands were originally ruled by
chieftains who commanded huge fleets of outrigger canoes; religious
practices at this time included human sacrifices.
Some of the first European
visitors, which included Samuel
Wallis
(1767), Louis-Antoinne
de Bougainville
(1768) and James
Cook
(1769), returned with stories of a
paradise on earth inhabited by 'noble savages' and Venus-like women whose
sexual favours were freely offered to the visitors. Europe was abuzz with
stories of a tropical haven of free love when Bougainville returned to
Paris and this myth attracted the likes of Herman Melville,
Robert Louis Stevenson
and
Paul Gauguin.
The most famous event in the region's recent
history was the Mutiny on the Bounty. It was on Tahiti and the
Austral island of Tubuai that Fletcher Christen and his mutineers sought
refuge after setting William
Bligh and his faithful crew members adrift in
a tiny open boat near the Tongan islands on 28 April 1789. And,
ultimately, it was on Tahiti that the long arm of British law rounded up
those mutineers who hadn't escaped to Pitcairn Island, and made them face
British justice.
At the time of the mutiny, the Polynesian islands
were ruled locally by important families - there was no all-prevailing
ruler. The Polynesians had long realised the power of European weaponry
and had courted earlier visitors to make allegiances in regional power
struggles. While Cook, Bougainville and others had resisted this, the Bounty
mutineers offered themselves as mercenaries. The Pomares, just one of the
powerful Tahitian families, secured their services and, as a consequence,
came to control most of the islands.
Soon whalers and traders were calling in at the
Polynesian islands, trading weapons for fresh food, introducing the notion
of prostitution and spreading European diseases to which the islanders had
no natural immunity. Protestant missionaries were deployed to put an end
to all that nudity, erotic dancing, wanton sex and heathen religion, and
traditional Polynesian culture rapidly fell apart. The islands' population
plummeted and the tyrannical Protestant missionaries razed Polynesian
temples (maraes) to the ground, forbidding any activities that were
not devoutly Christian.
And then the French came. They were already in
control of the Marquesian archipelago to the northeast and after much
filibustering, political browbeating and intimidation, managed to oust the
English and secure most of what would become French Polynesia in 1842.
Queen Pomare IV, who had already done much to unify the islands under her
rule, was forced to yield to the French and spent the rest of her 50-year
reign as a figurehead.
At the turn of the 20th century the Polynesian
islands became part of the Établissements français d'Océanie
(French Pacific Settlements) and a programme of rapid commercial expansion
was introduced. Chinese labourers came to work on vanilla and cotton
plantations, and copra and mother-of-pearl production became the
cornerstone of the French Polynesian economy. Nearly 1000 Polynesians were
sent to Europe to fight the Germans in WWI, and 5000 US soldiers landed on
Bora Bora soon after the USA's entrance into WWII to thwart the Japanese
advance in the Pacific.
The French had been testing weapons in the Sahara
Desert, but Algerian independence caused General de Gaulle to announce in
1963 that the tiny atolls of Moruroa (often misspelt 'Mururoa') and
Fangataufa in the Tuamotus would serve as the new sites for weapons
testing, and the Centre d'expérimentations du Pacifique was born.
As a result of continuing world opposition, the testing shifted
underground in 1981. Of course the French claim that the testing is
perfectly safe but don't seem prepared to conduct it on French domestic
soil.
In 1995 when French president Jacques Chirac
announced that a new series of underground tests were to be conducted, the
world reverberated with protest and condemnation. Riots in the streets of
Papeete saw hundreds of cars overturned and buildings set alight, and the
Chilean and New Zealand ambassadors were recalled from Paris. The tests
were completed in early 1996 and the French government has since stated
that the nuclear-testing programme is over. After more than 150 separate
tests of up to 200 kilotons (10 times more powerful than the bomb which
levelled Hiroshima) the dust has once again settled around the atolls of
Moruroa and Fangataufa, though the longer-term effects remains to be seen.
There is now a considerable groundswell of calls
for independence from France, but the orthodox political powers, headed by
President Gaston Flosse, have made it clear this will not happen - at
least not in the medium term - and France seems unlikely to relinquish its
overseas territories. French Polynesia currently has a 41-member
Territorial Assembly elected by popular vote every five years. The
Republic of France is represented in the territory by a high commissioner
appointed by the Republic. Over a 20 year period, ending in 1996, the
island group took over internal management, but calls for independence are
a permanent fixture on the political map. For
more general information
on French Polynesia, go to: |
