ABSTRACT
France, especially under Louis Philippe, was definitely making a bid for supremacy in the Pacific. In Polynesia, the Marquesas and the Leeward Islands were added to Tahiti; and, across in the Melanesian world, France obtained equal rights with Great Britain in a Condominium over the New Hebrides. Tahiti was the earliest French settlement in the Pacific. Tahiti remained the Paradise of the Pacific, Papeete a merry little Paris in an environment of flame-trees and bougain-villeas and honey-coloured Polynesians, but as a well-organized colony simply did not exist. New Caledonia has nothing in common with Tahiti. It belongs to the continental type of Pacific Islands and is rather a tiny continent than a group like Tahiti. The most interesting of the French spheres of influence in the Pacific is undoubtedly the group of the New Hebrides,—a rich scattered line of islands lying to the north of New Caledonia and jointly administered by France and Great Britain under a Condominium.
