The French Navy in the South Pacific

Abstract

More than any other agency of the French State, the Navy assured a French presence in the Pacific in the nineteenth century. Admirals du Petit-Thouars and Febvrier-Despointes took possession of Tahiti and New Caledonia in the name of the French monarchs. The governors of the French colonies until the 1880s were naval officers; the Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies managed overseas territories until the 1890s. Even popular images of the Pacific were the product of mariners — after all, were not Pierre Loti and Victor Segalen attached to the Navy, one as officer, the other as medical doctor? Given the lesser importance of French colonists and traders and the stormy relationship between missionaries and the State, it is fair to say that the Navy largely formed French policy in the Pacific in the late 1800s. An examination of the Navy in the Pacific during this period is, therefore, particularly revealing about French military activity and the often conflicting relations between naval officers and other representatives of France. Such an analysis also permits an answer to the question of whether there was an overall French policy in the Pacific during this era of the division of the Pacific among European powers and the heightening of international tensions.¹ The reports left by naval commanders provide a comprehensive view of the Pacific and explain the perspective of ‘La Royale’.²