Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World
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The ways in which these acts of violence were contested also collectively demonstrate some of the broader dynamics, structures and relationships that must be considered as a part of a history of colonial violence in New Caledonia in the early-twentieth century. Historian Isabelle Merle has written that rather than experiencing an ‘overt violence, New Caledonia suffered from a climate of insecurity, from a latent violence that was contained but always present’. 59 When violence was exposed, as in the moments described in this chapter, the prevailing climate and tensions played a key role in shaping local reactions and the ways in which violence was contested. Amongst Kanak the symbolic violence of Céu’s arrest caused widespread consternation and fear; the arrest exposed the violent underpinnings of the relations between gendarmes/syndics and chiefs which maintained the indigénat. Amongst Europeans, the violence involved in the killing of the Grassins and Papin was heightened by their status as free settlers with reputations for having maintained good relations with the Kanak whose former lands they occupied. Ideas about the respectability , virtue or morality of free (as opposed to penal) settlers were important elements in the debates that then took place among Europeans around the explanation of the violence carried out by Kanak. One of the most striking contests was the clash between the prejudices of those inclined to attribute violence or potential violence to the actions of bad colonists and those who defended the reputation of the Grassins and Papin.
In the archival record the critiques of missionaries both Catholic and Protestant are by far the most strident, but in these instances neither mission spoke out in public; for the most part their condemnations remained silent protests. It is striking, however, that colonial violence in its various forms—structural, symbolic, physical—was widely recognised in official reports and in public debates such as the 1919 trial. Some denounced the violence of the administration in its use of the indigénat and in its wartime recruitment. Others stressed the structural violence of colonisation, the clash of races and the damage caused by the pastoral frontier. All sought to diminish their own responsibility and in this they were both greatly aided by the evidence that an intra-Kanak agenda was at play in the Oué-Hava attack. Ultimately, this allowed colonial violence to be set aside and downplayed.
Notes
1.This chapter draws in part from research published in Specters of Violence in a Colonial Context: New Caledonia, 1917 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2012).
2.David Riches, ‘The Phenomenon of Violence’, in David Riches (ed.), The Anthropology of Violence (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 7–10; Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, Violence: Theory and Ethnography (London: Continuum, 2002), 3. I have also deployed this same approach with a focus on the punitive expeditions organised in 1917 in ‘“Thoughtlessly savage words”: the contested legitimacy of colonial violence in New Caledonia, 1917–18’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 18:1 (2017), https://muse.jhu.edu/article/655210 2017.
3. Journal officiel de la Nouvelle-Calédonie (hereafter JONC), 2616, 16 mai 1911.
4.Tracey Banivanua Mar, ‘Consolidating violence and colonial rule: discipline and protection in colonial Queensland’, Postcolonial Studies, 8:3 (2005), 315.
5.Gregory Mann, ‘What was the indigénat? The ‘Empire of Law’ in French West Africa’, Journal of African History, 50, 3, 2009, 332, 336 and 338. See also: Samuel Kahlman, ‘Introduction: Colonial Violence’, Historical Reflections, 36:2 (2010), 1–6.
6.Outside of quotations I use the modern spelling Céu. In colonial records his name appears as Thieou or Tieou. Leenhardt identified him as ‘Céou (Tchéou) Batepoanwhane’. Maurice Leenhardt, ‘Les événements de 1917 en Nouvelle-Calédonie: géographie des tribus et des chefs’, Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 58 (mars–juin, 1978), 19–22.
7.Saint-Martin, Rapport au sujet de l’arrestation du petit chef Thieou, no. 259, 12 fevrier 1917, Archives de l’Archévêché de Nouméa (hereafter AAN) 21.1.
8.Saint-Martin, Rapport au sujet de l’arrestation du petit chef Thieou, no. 259, 12 fevrier 1917, Archives de l’Archévêché de Nouméa (hereafter AAN) 21.1.
9.Saint-Martin, Rapport sur les agissements du petit chef Thieou, no. 16, 12 mars 1917, AFF POL 741, Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence (hereafter ANOM). By this time the arrest had been reported in the 28 February issue of La France Australe.
10.Décision du 12 mars 1917, JONC, 2841, 17 mars 1917; Décision du 20 avril 1917, JONC, 2847, 28 avril 1917.
11.Saint-Martin, Rapport sur les agissements du petit chef Thieou de Oué-Hava, no. 16, 12 mars 1917, AFF POL 741, ANOM; Repiquet à Colonies, no. 536 du 27 septembre 1917, AFF POL 741, ANOM; Arrêté portant internement aux Nouvelles Hébrides, pendant trois ans, du petit chef Thieou, no. 619, 24 août 1917, AFF POL 741, ANOM.
12.For more detail on this attempted arrest see Muckle, Specters of Violence, 33–35 and 51–54.
13.Repiquet (Gouverneur) à Min. des Colonies, 28 juin 1917, 12H2 (8:254), Département de l’armée de Terre, Service historique de la Défense, Vincennes (hereafter DAT, SHD).
14.Rouel à Chanrion, Station Laborderie—Tipindjé, 28 juillet 1917, AAN 20.1.
15.Elaicha à Misi, Tiwandé, 26 juillet 1917 (French translation), 54APOM4 (pièce 236), ANOM. The original letter is located in the series 12 J, ANC. It is possible that there were separate incidents on 14 and 26 July, but in my opinion this is unlikely.
16.Rouel à Chanrion, Tipindjé, 10 août 1917, AAN 20.1.
17.Saint-Martin, Rapport au sujet de l’arrestation du petit chef Thieou, no. 259, 12 fevrier 1917, AAN 21.1.
18.Interrogatoire de l’indigène Poindet, la Prison Civile, 1er février 1918, AAN 21.1.
19.Faure, ‘“Affaires de Koné” Rapport du Brigadier Faure sur les débuts de l’insurrection de 1917 en Nouvelle-Calédonie’, Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 76 (1983), 71.
20.‘Affaire Leconte’, note dated 22 octobre 1909, NC 231, ANOM.
21.Leenhardt à Jeanne, à bord St. Pierre, 28–29 avril 1917, 12 J, ANC.
22.Ibid.; Leenhardt à Jeanne, Do Néva, 1 mai 1917, 12 J, ANC.
23.Muckle, Specters of Violence, 55 and 161–162.
24.These networks included the Comité de protection et de défense des indigènes and the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme.
25.Meray (Inspecteur des Colonies) à Min. des Colonies, Paris, 21 août 1902, CONTR 821, ANOM.
26.Meray (Inspecteur des Colonies) à Min. des colonies, no.28, Nouméa, 24 mai 1902, CONTR 821, ANOM.
27.Revel (Inspecteur des Colonies), Rapport no. 23, 18 mars 1907, NC 209, ANOM; Fillon (Inspecteur des Colonies) à Min des Colonies, no. 22, Nouméa, 15 mai 1907, AFF POL 741, ANOM. Cf. Isabelle Merle, ‘De la “légalisation” de la violence en contexte colonial. Le régime de l’indigénat en question’, Politix, 17: 66 (2004), 137–162.
28.Revel (Inspecteur des Colonies), Rapport no. 47, 19 janvier 1912, AFF POL 3196, ANOM.
29.Nouvelle Calédonie et Dépendances, Commission d’enquête nommée à l’occasion des troubles de Wagap, Ina, et Tiéti (Nouméa: Imprimierie Calédonienne, 1900), 8–13.
30.Rapport sur l’enquête faite au sujet des faits relevés contre M. Dehné, administrateur à Canala, Nouméa, 13 juin 1902, FM, ee/ii/882/4, ANOM.
31.‘Affaire des rebelles—28e audience’, La France Australe, 25 août 1919.
32.On this dynamic more generally see Adrian Muckle, ‘Killing the “Fantôme Canaque”: evoking and invoking the possibility of revolt in New Caledonia (1853–1915)’, Journal of Pacific History, 37:1 (2002), 25–44.
33.Exposé des opérations successives à exécuter dès que l’ordre de mobilisation sera parvenu dans la colonie, 1893, 12H1 (dossier 4), DAT, SHD.
34.Elizabeth Elbourne, ‘The Sin of the Settler: the 1835–36 Select Committee on Aborigines and Debates over Virtue and Conquest in the Early Nineteenth-Century British White Settler Empire’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 4:3 (2003), http://muse.jhu.edu/jo
urnals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v004/4.3elbourne.html: para. 34.
35.Leenhardt à Jeanne, [Tiparama], 17 juin 1917, 12 J, Archives de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, Nouméa (hereafter ANC).
36.Leenhardt à Jeanne, Poyes, 19 juin 1917, 12 J, ANC.
37.‘L’assassinat de la Wé-Hawa’, Bulletin du Commerce, 23 juin 1917. In an earlier edition, on 19 May, the Bulletin had noted that Céu’s arrest ‘at the instigation of a courageous settler, Mr Grassin, has deprived the canaques of one of their war chiefs who made no secret of his animosity towards the French’.
38.Leenhardt à Jeanne, Do Néva, 24 juin 1917, 12 J, ANC; Leenhardt à Jeanne, Do Néva, 8 juillet 1917, 12 J, ANC.
39.Bécu (Chef de la Section volante de Hyenghène) à M. le Commandant Supérieur des Troupes du Groupe du Pacifique, Rapport no. 5, Hienghène, 11 juin 1917, 12H2 (8:32), DAT, SHD. My emphasis.
40.Chanrion à Murard, Nouméa, 27 juin 1917, AAN 20.1.
41.‘Lettre de E. Ragot’, La France Australe, 5 juillet 1917.
42.Bécu (Chef de la Section volante de Hyenghène) à M. le Commandant Supérieur des Troupes, Rapport No. 8, Hienghène, 27 juin 1917, 12H2 (8:246), DAT, SHD.
43.Isabelle Merle, Expériences coloniales: la Nouvelle-Calédonie (1853–1920) (Paris: Belin, 1995), 207–208 and 210–211.
44.Murard à Chanrion, Hienghène, 19 juin 1917, AAN 39.5.
45.Bronwen Douglas, Across the Great Divide: Journeys in History and Anthropology (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1998), 146–47. See also: Douglas, ‘Fighting as Savagery and Romance: New Caledonia Past and Present’, in Reflections on Violence in Melanesia, ed. Sinclair Dinnen and Alison Ley (Leichardt and Canberra: Hawkins Press and Asia Pacific Press, 2000), 53–64.
46.Repiquet à Min. des Colonies, no. 727, 7 décembre 1917, Causes profondes de la rébellion, AFF POL 742, ANOM.
47.Déposition du témoin Henriot Auguste, no. 874, 2 octobre 1918, AAN 21.7.
48.Parquet du Cour d’appel de Nouméa, Acte d’accusation—affaire des rebelles, 10 juin 1919, AAN 21.9.
49.Cour d’assises, 29e audience, 25 août, La France Australe, 26 août 1919. Several other Kanak witnesses identified another chief as being responsible.
50.On the trial testimony see Muckle, Specters of Violence, 160–164 and 189–190.
51.Leenhardt à Jeanne, Do Néva, 24 juin 1917, 12 J, ANC.
52.Rouel à Chanrion, Amoa, 28 juin 1917, AAN 20.1; Rouel à Chanrion, Station Laborderie-Tipindjé, 28 juillet 1917, AAN 20.1
53.‘Dans le nord de la colonie’, Bulletin du Commerce, 8 septembre 1917; ‘Communiqué’, Bulletin du Commerce, 14 juill. 1917.
54.Lewis Priday, ‘Sixteen Europeans Died in Last Native Revolt in New Caledonia’, Pacific Islands Monthly, 34 (Oct. 1963), 81–83.
55.Alain Saussol, L’Héritage: Essai sur le problème foncier mélanésien en Nouvelle-Calédonie (Paris: Musée de l’Homme, 1979), 318; Lionel Duroy, Hienghène, le désespoir calédonien (Paris: Barrault, 1988), 101–102. Also in question was anthropologist Jean Guiart’s article, ‘Les événements de 1917 en Nouvelle-Calédonie’, Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 26–29 (1970), 272.
56.Paul Griscelli, ‘Le Massacre des Grassin (rébellion de 1917)’, Bulletin de la Société d’Etudes Historiques de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, 51 (1982), 33–42; idem., ‘Et voilà comment on écrit l’histoire, mise au point à propos de Hienghène le désespoir calédonien (L. Duroy),’ Bulletin de la Société d’Etudes Historiques de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, 79 (1989), 73–75. Griscelli called out basic errors in these publications, but he also upheld the 1919 charges against Néa (despite his acquittal) and defended his rival, Kavéat, who had been presumed guilty (insisting that Kavéat’s relations with the Tipindjé settlers had been friendly).
57.Paul Griscelli, ‘Cold Case: Cannibalisme et conspiration dans le nord de la Nouvelle-Calédonie en 1917’, 21 mai 2015, http://coldcase28.blogspot.co.nz/2015/05/cannibalisme-et-conspiration-dans-le.html, accessed 1 June 2015.
58.I have not been able to verify whether a court martial took place. Griscelli writes that all reference to it was expunged from his uncle’s military records. In his account the prisoner is identified as Poigny, a brother of the principal Kanak leader, Noël. The year given, 1919, bears no correlation with the event described by Rouel and Elaicha, but may be a typographical error.
59.Isabelle Merle, Expériences coloniales: la Nouvelle-Calédonie (1853–1920) (Paris: Belin, 1995), 207–208 and 210–211.
© The Author(s) 2018
Philip Dwyer and Amanda Nettelbeck (eds.)Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern WorldCambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Serieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62923-0_12
From Liberation to Elimination: Violence and Resistance in Japan’s Southeast Asia, 1942–1945
Kelly Maddox1
(1)Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Kelly Maddox
Email: kelly.maddox1787@gmail.com
In December 1941, having temporarily incapacitated the US Navy following a surprise attack at Pearl Harbour, Japanese forces swept through Southeast Asia in a series of lightning strikes which saw a drastic increase in the size of the Empire. From the outset, conflict in the region was characterised as a ‘benevolent endeavour’ pursued on behalf of Asia which, should Japan be successful, would be liberated from the ‘tyranny’ of Western imperialism. 1 In spite of these pan-Asian overtones, however, war in the Pacific proved to be detrimental to the welfare of local inhabitants who suffered hardships under increasingly oppressive and exploitative occupation policies. Scholars give estimates in the millions for the total number of Southeast Asians who lost their lives in this supposedly magnanimous conflict. 2 While these deaths were often the consequence of deteriorating wartime conditions, many were a direct result of Japanese violence. Although by no means ubiquitous, atrocities and human rights violations were certainly more widespread at this time. In fact, in some localities the quotidian violence of foreign occupation, long-endured by Southeast Asian peoples‚ radicalised further under Japanese rule as soldiers summarily executed large numbers of military-aged males, engaged in comprehensive scorched-earth policies and enacted reprisal massacres that occasionally targeted whole populations. In the Philippines, for instance, the final months of occupation saw the military embark on a devastating campaign of destruction, especially in Manila and its surrounding provinces, which left countless towns and villages decimated and resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 civilians.
The tribunals conducted by the Allies in the aftermath of the Second World War copiously documented the brutality and cruelty of Japanese forces in Asia. More than that even, in placing the Japanese Empire under the spotlight, the trials provided a unique opportunity for both oppressor and oppressed to recount their experiences, offering useful insights into the relationship between violence and empire. Nevertheless, the narrative, as established during these trials, was one in which Imperial Japan was framed as an Asian counterpart to Nazi Germany. 3 Certainly, there were, and still are connections to be made between these two powers, especially in respect to their shared dissatisfaction with the international system and their efforts to establish a ‘New Order’ in their respective regions. The emphasis on Japan’s Axis connection, however, has contributed to a narrow focus on the origins of Japanese aggression as lying in the increased militarism and authoritarian politics in Japan at that time. As a result, the imperial character of violence perpetrated against Asians who stood in the way of the Japanese Empire has largely been overlooked.
In this chapter, I address this issue by exploring the imperial dynamics of Japanese violence in Southeast Asia, highlighting that the death and destruction visited on local inhabitants under Japanese occupation was rooted in the demands of establishing and maintaining control in the region. The sudden expansion of the Empire in 1942, for example, had raised some serious practical problems for Japanese forces overstretched by the demands
of the arduous and costly war in the Pacific and by continuing efforts to end the quagmire-like conflict in China (ongoing since 1937). As a result, they sometimes dealt with the difficulties of governing vast territories populated with peoples of diverse cultures and customs through recourse to repression, coercion and violence. Such techniques were not new. Not only had practices including massacres and scorched-earth tactics been fundamental to the military’s attempts to consolidate control in China, they had become a core component of Japanese occupation strategy having been honed during early encounters with local populations in Japan’s formal colonies of Taiwan and Korea. As in other empires, resistance was often a catalyst to the adoption of violence as a means of population control. Efforts to establish Japanese rule in Taiwan, Korea and China had all been hindered by periodic outbursts of armed resistance and had involved the radicalisation of practices that were progressively more ruthless as Japanese troops learned valuable lessons about the nature of asymmetric, colonial-style conflict. 4