New Caledonia

New Caledonia is a French territory in the southwest Pacific Ocean, a group of islands 1,210 kilometres east of Australia comprising the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Chesterfield Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of Pines and remote islets — some 18,575 square kilometres of land in the Melanesian subregion. Long inhabited by the indigenous Melanesian Kanak people, the archipelago was taken into French possession on 24 September 1853, when Admiral Febvrier Despointes, under orders from Emperor Napoleon III, formally took possession; the beginning of the period shown on the map. Captain Tardy de Montravel founded the capital, first named Port-de-France and now Nouméa, on 25 June 1854. From 1864 to the end of transportations in 1897, France sent about 22,000 criminals and political prisoners to New Caledonia as a penal colony, alongside free settlers on the west coast. The Kanak make up 41 per cent of the population today; pro-independence parties call the territory Kanaky. New Caledonia remains a sui generis collectivity of the French Republic with a unique legal status, associated with the European Union as an overseas country and territory.