ABSTRACT
In written histories of whatever political complexion, there is no doubt about the "outcome" of the wars of 1878-9 in New Caledonia: "the French" won; "the Melanesians" lost. Only the moral import of the agreed result varies: "the French" tended and tend to conceive it as the just and inevitable victory of civilisation over savagery; I modern Kanak and their sympathisers see it as nationalist martyrdom in an unequal encounter with rampant white imperialism (Anova-Ataba, 1969: 218; Dousset-Leenhardt, 1976: 23). Neither trope is mindful of grey areas and ambiguities, which belie a priori categories and ethnocentric or interested terminology. This chapter addresses the following questions, with particular reference to the Ourall theatre of the war.2 How apt are absolute, ultimate categories to the contemporaneous intentions, actions and experience of protagonists? to contingencies of time and place? to the singularity of particular campaigns? Who were "winners" and "losers", when, how? What did "winning/losing" comprise in military, rather than post-war sociopolitical terms?3
