Hebrides

France’S Grip On New

Picturesque But Forgotten Story of John Higginson

By H. E. L. Friday

rtE French hold on the New Hebrides was the work of one man, English-born John Hig ginson, whom the London Morning Post dubbed the “Cecil Rhodes of the South Pacific.” He had previ ously made a fortune in Caledonian nickel, and with Rothschild capital had founded the great French Nickel Company, which has since virtually run the older colony. For this work he was given special naturalisation papers by the Presi dent of the French Republic, who loaded him with honours.

Higginson was very much in volved in the Hebridean labour traffic, and employed some of the most notorious of the blackbirders.

It was neither the whalers, the mis sionaries, nor the secretive sandal wood traders, but the recruiters who revealed to the outside world the riches awaiting exploitation in this seductive yet treacherous and fever-stricken group.

Yet when Higginson began to take notice he found the British planter and trader in possession from the tiny Banks islands in the

north to Anatom in the south, with not one single Frenchman settled in the entire archipelago. While British settlement was going on, French national ambitions had been weakened by defeat in Europe, while New Caledonia was exclusive ly occupied with the first nickel rush and the great native revolt which followed in 1878-79.

HIGGINSON’S colonisation of the New Hebrides, which he aimed to make a dependency of New Caledonia, has been termed his epic achievement; the way he turned the tables on the casual British was dramatic in the ex treme.

He was the first to boost the eco nomic possibilities of the group, the first to hold out promises of ade quate protection for the white settler, and at one time he came near to securing right-out annexa tion to France. His idea was to secure a French preponderance of interest so that the British would be prepared to exchange their in terests for concessions elsewhere; and it took him only a few months to make this result seem possible.

Higginson claimed that New Hebridean soil was so fertile that it could become a garden colony, con tributing its quota to the wealth of France and to the rapidly develop ing mining colony of New Cale donia, to which he considered its resources were complementary. His was a real 19th century imperialist’s dream. The French Cabinet told him to go ahead, though it was felt that proclamation of French sovereignty should await the es tablishment of active branches of French trading concerns. (Over)

Higginson returned from Paris at a time when Sir Arthur Gordon, the first British High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, was mak ing it known that titles of land ac quired from natives in the New Hebrides could be registered with the British authorities in Fiji. This guarantee of possession was en couraging British planters and traders to stake a claim in this primitive, forbidding no-man’s land where death was never far away.

A copy of the British proclama tion quickly fell into Higginson’s hands; and he read it as a move designed to draw the group into the British orbit; but it gave him the idea how to beat the British at their own game. And behind the scene, of course, the diplomats were busy, France protesting that the move was not in accordance with the tentative understanding that neither country would do anything to prejudice the independence of the group without first consulting the other.

Higginson was not dismayed by the fact that the British already had a score or two of adventurous traders and planters scattered thinly among the innumerable isles.

If the Fijian Registration Act was legal, then a New Caledonian

Registration Act would be equally legal.

His plans were far more prompt, decisive, wholesale and ruthless than anything the British had thought of. He saw to it that the widest publicity was given to the announcement that settlers, no

matter from where, could secure titles to New Hebridean territory by registering their claims in Noumea. rpHOUGH it may seem strange to JL us to-day, practically all the British settlers discouraged because warships of the Australian

station did not adequately protect their lives, while they were apt to apply too strictly the liquor and re cruiting laws—rallied to Higginson’s banner. His only opponents, and they were implacable, were the Presbyterian missionaries; but to them the British planters were antagonistic because of their ten dency to hamper recruitment of kanaka labour.

Sir William Morgan, ex-Premier of South Australia (who had de serted politics in 1881, when his ministry was defeated) was, with his two sons, already closely in volved with Higginson’s mining and other ventures in New Caledonia.

He owned the blackbirding schooner Energy, and had founded in Noumea what was described as “a speculative company for de veloping the New Hebrides.” He now threw in his lot with Higgin son’s famous Compagnie Cale donienne des Nouvelles Hebrides, whose initial capital of £20,000 was quickly raised to £BO,OOO, or two million francs. Its avowed object was to assist French settlement of the group and “to inaugurate a reliable and unobjectionable sys tem of procuring native labourers for New Caledonia.”

The French Government gave the company its blessing, and at differ ent times down to our own day has been ready at crucial times to weigh in with political and economic aid.

IT was in the latter half of 1882 that the Australian Colonies and the British in Fiji woke up to find that Higginson had stolen a march on them. His move had been to charter the small steamer Caledonien, which he loaded up with 100,000 francs worth of mer chandise and lots of ready cash.

Leaving Noumea, the ship called at just about every settlement or port of call where white storekeepers, planters or native chiefs had land, labour or other assets for sale.

The temptation proved irresistible-; within a few weeks practically all the then settled areas of the New Hebrides, apart from the missions, had changed allegiance.

The Caledonien, master Captain Vidal, had on board three of Higginson’s most influential agents; Alphonse Bernier, a rich Efate settler named Peterson Stuart, and Higginson’s lifelong friend, the capable Captain B. Gaspard. Their job was “to supervise and ensure the legality of all transfers, purchase and agreement entered into on be half of the company”. The scramble for the cash and trade goods—gin and carbines, beads and calico, tobacco and axes, jews harps and so forth—was such that the company quickly had on its books most of the fertile coastal areas.

Although for trifling payment many of the natives blandly signed

away whole areas which on sub sequent inquiry turned out to be tribal or family rather than in dividual property, the Caledonian administration hastened to re cognise their marks, duly witnessed by Higginson’s envoys, and issued titles to the lands thus acquired.

The full extent of Higginson’s coup was only realised in Australia following a loud outburst from the Protestant missionaries, who pro claimed with bitter vehemence in the Sydney and Melbourne papers that much of the land had been “sold” by natives quite incapable of understanding the nature of a legal contract; that the price paid in goods was in most cases, derisory: that a good many thousand

hectares (a hectare is nearly 2.5 acres) had been already “sold” by the same natives two or three times over; and that they were quite ready to “sell” them all over again to the next European who came along with a bottle of gin or a bale of cotton.

The French ignored these pro tests, and many of the Europeans, feeling as has been said, that the French would give them better security of life and property and a greater latitude in trade and re cruiting matters, were induced to stay on as salaried managers and agents of the company.

On Efate alone Gaspard, on this and subsequent trips, bought 92,000 hectares from the natives, besides acquiring the pick of the planta tions formerly in British hands.

The key to his success was that the most influential settler in the group, Captain Donald Mac Leod — by all accounts an extraordinary man as well as being the richest of the original planters, and the founder of Port Vila—threw in his lot with Higginson. He brought in most of the other planters, who de clared they were tired of asking the Fijian and Australian authori ties to take some practical interest in their welfare.

SO, by the end of the year, from Efate to Espiritu Santo, the French company was able to

boast that it had acquired three million acres of the choicest land, for situation and fertility, in the archipelago. MacLeod was likewise of great use in inducing the chiefs, who looked upon him almost as a god, to sell their coastal lands and move their villages elsewhere. He also engaged native labour for the company’s plantations and for Higginson’s New Caledonian mining and agricultural ventures.

The “salt water” chiefs, informed of the ship’s impending arrival by MacLeod, went on board at bay after bay to make their marks on title deeds already prepared.

Wherever possible the company bought up big lots of from 8,000 to 10,000 hectares at a time; and wherever parties landed the French flag was ceremoniously hoisted.

At the same time the Caledonien was commissioned to recruit labour.

On Efate, where the missions had been the longest established, the labour situation was the most un satisfactory, for the men generally refused to work for the white man, though they did not object to going to other islands to work. The depopulation of this thickly in habited group was already under way. Most of the natives sent to Higginson’s nickel mines died within a year or two. (The Noumea papers used to print periodical lists of them, running to several columns, but suddenly gave up the practice.)

To fill the labour gap caused by the decline of blackbirding, the French later introduced thousands of Japanese, Indo-Chinese and Javanese coolies to do plantation

and mining work in the French Pacific, but this source of labour has been denied to those planters in the New Hebrides who have re tained British nationality.

HIGGINSON was so well satisfied with Gaspard’s report that he decided to make a tour of the New Hebrides on his own account.

He did so on a ship named after him, the John Higginson, an iron vessel of 400 tons and finest of the Caledonian coastal craft, belonging in the first place to Higginson, Morgan and Co. (A year or two later she was wrecked on the Kouakoue Reef.) Higginson’s tour was a triumph.

With him were directors of the Compagnie, including John and William Morgan, sons of Sir William, importers in a very big way who had built the Noumea flour mill, then the tallest building in the port, and who ran it with huge orders from the French peni tentiary. Also on board were the Mayor of Noumea, Mr. J. B. B.

Dezarnaulds (grandfather of the present Sydney solicitor of that name), businessmen named Violette and le Granval, a penitentiary boss named Verignon (who was investi gating the possibility of introduc ing convict labour to the New Hebrides), and Paris journalists named Mourot and Julien Bernier.

Higginson clinched deals with Bush and Co., a British concern owning several rich plantations, and

with MacLeod, Peterson Stuart, Young and other planters, as well as with the chiefs, adding a further 240,000 acres to the company’s hold ings. There was so much flag wagging that the missionaries accused Higginson of taking posses sion of the group, not only in the name of the company, but of France. This charge seemed justi

fled two or three years later, when France sent soldiers to occupy strategic points in the Hebrides; they were only withdrawn after strongly-worded British protests.

With much to report, Higginson again visited Paris. He returned with a French Government promise to survey the company’s territory free of charge, and with a contract

from the penitentiary to furnish him with 2,500,000 days of free con vict labour for his Caledonian nickel mines. In return he handed over 20,000 hectares of Hebridean soil to the French Government and agreed to establish a coaling station for French warships and to carry mail between Noumea and the Hebridean group.

HIGGINSON paid several other dramatic visits to the Hebrides, two of them in 1884. He took staff with him for a new store at Port Sandwich, on Mallicolo, to be on the same scale as those already operating at Havannah and Port Vila. The coastal chiefs came on Board the Chevert, where the great man stood surrounded by French officers and representatives of the company, and were presented with military uniforms in which, with sabre at side and kepi on head, they strutted about with con siderable pride. Higginson explained to Nearn Bangere, Sam (his son), and Timbou, chief of the Bangaou: “You white chiefs now. When white ship come you put on uniforms and say you French chiefs.” The as sembly toasted La Patrie in bumpers of champagne.

On returning to Port Vila, Higgin son was presented with an illum inated address praising his work as empire builder, but hoping it was not France’s intention to turn the place into a convict colony. In Paris, his offices at No. 8 Rue de la Paix, were deluged with inquiries from would-be colonists, but out of 2,500 applicants not more than 50 seem to have reached the group and most of these perished miser ably. In addition to managers, agents, and planters, a few score convicts of good behaviour were allowed to work at the company’s depots in the Hebrides and on plan tations owned personally by Higgin son, who built up a personal estate in the group worth £150,000, quite apart from his interests in the company.

Ballande and Sons, of Bordeaux (“the Burns Philp of the French Pacific,” as M. Milliard, a former managing director in Noumea, once described them to me) also started a shipping service and bought up plantations wholesale, particularly in the south-east of Mallicolo and around the south of Santo. France granted Ballandes 200 convict em employees for a ten-years period, and L. Henriques, a member of Higginson’s board, got a further BUT the Presbyterian missions found a strong supporter in James Service, the Victorian Premier; but for his prompt and determined action it is more than likely that France would have annexed the New Hebrides without real opposition from the British Foreign Office.

The French story is that Britain was disposed to cede her interests in the New Hebrides for the island “f.RfPa (south of the Society group), on condition that France should agree to suppress transportation to New Caledonia, but the French Government refused. In any case Service roused Australians against the dangers of French recidivist policy, his argument being that were France allowed to annex the Hebrides yet another colony at this continent’s eastern threshold would be swamped with “the worst type of colonist.”

Australia therefore enthusiastically supported Britain in 1889 when she successfully demanded the withdrawal of French armed forces

from the New Hebrides Soon after when the Societe FrancaSe di

Nouvelles Hebrides too” ttaS

Compagme Caledonienne’s “and and assets, the New South Wales Government replied to French shipping subsidies by subsidising Burns Philp to operate a servicl calling at the New Hebrides everv second month The New Hebrides officially

ceased to be a no-man’s-land only on December 2, 1907, when the Con dominium was proclaimed at Port Vila.

The ensuing years have shown the tenacity of French settlement as established by Higginson, for although the white population has regularly increased, the British colonists are still relatively fewer than the French, who solved their labour problem by bringing in Asiatics. Nevertheless, two World Wars have shown all New Hebri dean whites how dependent they are on Australian goodwill; the nationals of both countries are to day excellent friends, now that the Age of John Higginson has passed— or is rapidly passing.