France annexed New Caledonia in 1853 and used it from 1864 as a penal colony, transporting some 22,000 convicts and about 4,000 political deportees, among them Paris Communards and Algerian insurgents. Kanak clans were progressively removed from the best land under the cantonnement policy and confined to reserves governed by the indigenat, a code of administrative penalties and movement restrictions that lasted until 1946; the Kanak population fell by roughly half between annexation and the 1920s, chiefly from introduced disease and dislocation. A major revolt led by the chief Atai in 1878 was suppressed with an estimated 1,000-1,200 Kanak killed, and a further rising in 1917 was put down in the north. Political conflict over independence intensified in the 1980s in the period known as les Evenements, marked by the ambush of Kanak activists at Hienghene in 1984, in which ten men were killed, and the hostage-taking and assault on the Ouvea cave in May 1988, in which nineteen Kanak and two gendarmes died. The Matignon Agreements of June 1988 and the Noumea Accord of 1998 established a decolonisation process and a series of referendums, the last of which, in 2021, was boycotted by the pro-independence movement. New Caledonia was absent from the atlas.
France annexed New Caledonia, used it as a penal colony, confined the Kanak to reserves under the cantonnement policy and the indigenat code, and suppressed revolts; conflict between Kanak independence forces and loyalists in the 1980s ended with the Matignon Agreements
Estimates of the Kanak population in 1853 range from about 40,000 to 70,000; disease, land seizure under the cantonnement policy and the repression of the 1878 and 1917 revolts reduced it to about 27,000 by 1921, its lowest recorded point, after which it recovered. By the 1980s Kanak numbered around 60,000-70,000, roughly 43 per cent of the territory's population.
The bulk of the toll is the suppression of the 1878 Atai revolt, estimated in French colonial and later scholarly accounts at about 1,000-1,200 Kanak dead along with some 200 settlers and militia; the upper end adds the 1917 rising and scattered punitive operations. The 1980s Evenements caused roughly 80 deaths in total, including the ten Kanak killed at Hienghene in 1984 and the nineteen Kanak and two gendarmes killed at Ouvea in 1988.
French colonial land registers and the indigenat regulations document the removals, forced labour requisitions and administrative detention of Kanak; the 1878 suppression is recorded in French military reports.
New Caledonia, France