Adrian Muckle
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824835095
- eISBN:
- 9780824869625
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824835095.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Pacific Studies
This concluding chapter reiterates that the circumstances in which the war broke out at Tiamou in April 1917 provided an opportunity to examine the place of fear, rumor, and violence in attempts to ...
More
This concluding chapter reiterates that the circumstances in which the war broke out at Tiamou in April 1917 provided an opportunity to examine the place of fear, rumor, and violence in attempts to maintain colonial power relations. War was not the result of an innocent misunderstanding or mutual incomprehension. Nor was it a product of wild settler imaginations, unprovoked Kanak aggression, or a “savage” reflex. Threats by colonial administrators and their intermediaries during recruitment for the war in Europe were one immediate catalyst. For those on the receiving end, threats were heightened by the specter of arbitrary arrest and grievances accumulated over six decades of French colonization as well as personal and collective enmities, rivalries, and insults.Less
This concluding chapter reiterates that the circumstances in which the war broke out at Tiamou in April 1917 provided an opportunity to examine the place of fear, rumor, and violence in attempts to maintain colonial power relations. War was not the result of an innocent misunderstanding or mutual incomprehension. Nor was it a product of wild settler imaginations, unprovoked Kanak aggression, or a “savage” reflex. Threats by colonial administrators and their intermediaries during recruitment for the war in Europe were one immediate catalyst. For those on the receiving end, threats were heightened by the specter of arbitrary arrest and grievances accumulated over six decades of French colonization as well as personal and collective enmities, rivalries, and insults.
