 Caldoche "bushmen" cavaliers carrying the 2011 Pacific Games flame inBourail | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 73,199 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| New Caledonia (24.1% of total population) Mainly inNouméa,Bourail,Boulouparis,La Foa,Le Mont-Dore,Farino[citation needed] | |
| Languages | |
| French[citation needed] | |
| Religion | |
| MainlyCatholicism, Protestantism[citation needed] | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| French people |
Caldoche (French pronunciation:[kaldɔʃ]ⓘ) is the name given to inhabitants of theFrenchoverseas collectivity ofNew Caledonia ofEuropean ethnic origin who have settled in New Caledonia since the 19th century. The formal name to refer to this particular population isCalédoniens, short for the very formalNéo-Calédoniens, but thisself-appellation technically includes all inhabitants of the New Caledonian archipelago, not just the Caldoche.
AnotherEuropean demographic within the population of New Caledonia are expatriates frommetropolitan France who have arrived recently or live there temporarily as French governmentcivil servants and contract workers. Caldoche emphasise their own distinct identity and position as permanent locals who have lived in New Caledonia for several generations by referring to the temporary French expatriates asmétros (short formétropolitains) or asZoreilles (informallyzozos) in local slang.
A majority of the Caldoche are of French descent and have their origins as free colonial or penal settlers, with smaller but significant numbers of Caldoche being ofItalian,German,British,Polish,Belgian andIrish heritage. French is the main language spoken by the Caldoche.
New Caledonia was used as apenal colony from 1854 to 1922 by France. From this period and on, many Europeans (particularly of French and, to some extent,German origin) settled in the territory and they intermingled withAsian andPolynesian settlers.Code de l'indigénat, introduced in 1887, provided the free settler population with an advantageous status over the indigenousMelanesian peoples, known collectively asKanak. Caldoches settled and gained property on the dry west coast of the main islandGrande Terre where the capitalNouméa is also located, pushing the Kanaks onto small reservations in the north and east. With the superior position, they constituted the ruling class of the colony and they were the ones who widened the usage of the wordCanaque as a pejorative.
There are many theories on the origin of the term "Caldoche". The most widespread story, as told by the collective lexicon1001 Caledonian Words, attributes the term to local journalist and polemicist Jacqueline Schmidt, who participated actively towards the end of the 1960s in the debate concerning the Billotte laws (in particular the first law, which transferred mining responsibilities in New Caledonia to the state[1]), and signed her articles with the pseudonym "Caldoche", a portmanteau of the prefix "Cald-", referring to her strong feeling of belonging to New Caledonia, where her family settled almost 100 years earlier, and the suffix "-oche", referring to the pejorative term "dirty Boche", having been called that by some of her schoolfriends' parents due to her German heritage (the Schmidts form part of an important German community from the Rhineland, having fled Germany to escape Prussian domination in the 1860s[2]). The owner of the newspaperD1TO, Gerald Rousseau, found the name amusing, and popularised it.[3]
Many colonists either came to New Caledonia through personal initiative or were supported by government programmes and policies to populate New Caledonia. Examples of different waves of settlement include the following:
As well as these planned colonisation projects, many other settlers arrived through their own initiative, for various reasons including poverty at home (such as in the case of Irish and Italian settlers, as well as peasants from mountainous areas of France which were hit hard by the rural crisis of the 19th century), the possibility of acquiring wealth, politics (e.g. republican militants who fled Metropolitan France during the1851 Coup, or people from Germany and Alsace who refused to live under Prussian rule), or simply overstaying their posts in the civil service or the military.
The first 250 prisoners arrived in Port-de-France on board the shipL'Iphigénie. Alain Saussol estimates that 75 different convoys brought around 21,630 prisoners to the penal colony between 1864 and 1897.[9] By 1877, there were 11,110 penal colonists present in New Caledonia, making up around two-thirds of the European population at the time. The last prison colonies were closed in 1922 and 1931.[10]
The prisoner population could be divided into roughly three groups. The 'transported' were convicts sentenced under common law, ranging from eight years up to life, for crimes ranging from physical and sexual assault to murder.[citation needed] These were mostly taken to the prison atÎle Nou and worked on the construction of roads and buildings in the colony. Political prisoners, or the 'deported', made up the second group.[citation needed] Many of these participated in theParis Commune of 1871, 4250 of whom were sent either toÎle des Pins orDucos, includingLouise Michel andHenri Rochefort.[citation needed] After they were all granted amnesty in 1880, less than 40 families decided to stay in New Caledonia. Another group of 'deportees' were participants in theMokrani Revolt of 1871–72 in Algeria, the majority of whom decided to stay in New Caledonia following the granting of amnesty in 1895 and from whom the majority ofAlgerian New Caledonians inBourail are descended. Recidivists, or the 'relegated', made up the third group, 3757 of whom were sent from 1885 onwards to New Caledonia, particularly toÎle des Pins,Prony orBoulouparis.[citation needed] The 'transported' and 'relegated' stopped being brought to New Caledonia in 1897.[citation needed]
Following being condemned to forced labour, the prisoners had to atone for their crimes by working on penitentiary farms, and once freed were given a portion of the land. Overall around 1300 pieces of land, totalling around 260,000 hectares largely taken from the indigenousKanak people, were awarded to freed prisoners, particularly aroundBourail,La Foa-Farino,Ouégoa andPouembout, where many of the descendants of the prisoner population remain to this day.[citation needed]
The vast majority of Caldoche people are of French origin. Notable French immigration waves include those who fledAlsace andLorraine following theFranco-Prussian War in 1870, Creole people fromRéunion who fled during the sugar crisis of the 1860s and 1870s, merchants and ship owners fromBordeaux andNantes drawn to the island at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries by economic opportunities related to the discovery of nickel reserves, and colonists from theNord andPicardy regions. Other French people who settled the island included sailors and adventurers fromNormandy andBrittany, as well as settlers from the poorest regions of France in what is now theempty diagonal.
However, as previously mentioned, there were also a large number of Paddon and Cheval colonists of British and Irish origin (many of the latter having fled Ireland during theGreat Famine) who came to the island via Australia, as well as a sizeable number of Italians, Germans (particularly from the Rhineland), Belgians, Swiss, Spaniards, Croatians and Poles. A significant number of non-Europeans are also grouped under the Caldoche people despite often being of mixed race origin, notably those from Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, India (via Réunion) and Algeria (the latter particularly concentrated aroundBourail)
A majority of Caldoche people tend to live in the capitalNouméa and the surrounding areas of the South Province. There are also significant Caldoche communities located inBourail,Boulouparis,La Foa,Le Mont-Dore, with the Caldoche also making up a majority of the population inFarino.
There is usually a division among the Caldoche people between those in Nouméa and more urbanized areas and those in the countryside or 'the Brush' (French:les Broussards). The former are among the most established in the island, arriving in waves of pioneer colonisation in the 1850s to 1870s before the establishment of thepenal colony, many of whom having formerly lived in 'the Brush' before either having moved to the capital for economic reasons or witnessing their farms being swallowed up by the expanding urban area of Nouméa itself, and often these people still own rural properties outside of the city. The large number of White people in the capital has led to the city being commonly known as "Nouméa the White", with the combined self-declared European population comprising a plurality of 37.28% (61,034) of the population of Greater Nouméa and 43.4% of the population of Nouméa proper according to the 2009 census, despite more recent waves of immigration of workers fromWallis and Futuna as well as the rural exodus of the indigenousKanak people from the Brush. Taking into account both the mixed-racemetis population and people who put down an alternative ethnic designation on the census (e.g. 'Caledonian'), this proportion increases to 54.19% (88,728) of Greater Nouméa and 58.17% of Nouméa proper, although this figure could also include other populations such as immigrants fromAsia or theFrench Caribbean.
The termBroussard refers to people of European descent in the countryside who live a rural lifestyle, usually raisingcattle but alsocervids,poultry andrabbits. They are particularly concentrated on the West coast of themain island, fromPaïta in the South toKoumac in the North, with the proportion decreasing with increasing distance from the capital. Smaller communities also exist on the East coast, notably inTouho andPoindimié as well as in the mining villages ofKouaoua andThio, where the proportion oscillates between about 7–20% of the population according to the 2009 census. By contrast, they are almost completely absent from theLoyalty Islands, which remains customary property of the indigenous population.
Caldoches tend to be politicalloyalists and oppose independence from France, instead preferring to maintain New Caledonia as part of overseas France. Traditionally, the Caldoche have supported strongly loyalist parties with the most dominant beingThe Rally until 2004. In subsequent elections, their support shifted towardsAvenir ensemble ("Future Together") andCaledonia Together which have the vision of a shared, multiracial New Caledonia within the framework of remaining part of the French Republic.
It is difficult to gauge the total Caledonian population inNew Caledonia today, since the most recent census in 2009 only distinguishes those of European descent (71,721 people, or 29.2% of the total population) from those of mixed origin or 'several communities' (20,398 people or 8.31%),Indonesians (5003 people, 2.5%),Vietnamese people (2822, 1.43%) and those who simply refer to themselves as 'Caledonian' (12,177 people, 4.96%), many of whom consider themselves Caldoche, while the census makes no distinction between people of European descent who consider themselves 'Caldoche' and more recent immigrants fromMetropolitan France (the so-called 'Zoreilles').[11]
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