The Decolonisation Process Without Independence in the Light of Changes in the Nickel Sector in New Caledonia

Abstract

AbstractFrom the Matignon-Oudinot Accords of 1988 onwards, the pro-independence parties agreed to play the economic development game proposed by the State in order to reduce the glaring inequalities between Indigenous Kanaks and non-Kanaks. The FLNKS (Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste) took up the challenge in two of the three provinces, where Kanak people were in the majority, and the pro-independence coalition tried to establish a form of economic sovereignty by claiming partial public control of the “country’s” main resource, nickel. The story of the stages of this mining nationalism, which enabled the pro-independence movement to gain a foothold in a reconfigured nickel sector (despite encountering opposition both in the economic and the local political arena), aims to measure the road still to be travelled by FLNKS to achieve decolonisation. This could be in harmony with the foundation of a new national community of citizens, one that would be more autonomous vis-à-vis metropolitan France and in which the Kanaks would be fully included.