Cultural constants, geopolitical and strategic evolution of the island 
the Pacific islands and Australian hemisphere at the edge of 21-th century

By J.P. DOUMENGE*

The chief education officer Jean-Pierre Doumenge, the geographer from training, is Director of researches in the NATIONAL CENTER FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. He has on his asset multiple publications concerning outer-sea where he stays regularly since 1965. He works also on problems of inter-cultural in the developing countries of the inter-tropical zone since 1980. The former boarder of the Center of studies of tropical geography in Bordeaux-Talence, then in East-West center of Honolulu, he occupied the functions of chief education officer in the academy of the French West Indies and Guyana before steering in Paris the Center of higher studies on modern Africa and Asia. Last publication: L'outre - mer française, coll. U, Armand Colin, on 2000



  On the scale of the Pacific, it is frequent to treat the cultural identity, the social organization and the art of living of the populations of multi-secular anchoring independently of political strategies of the contemporary States, of economic activities and organizations of their nationals. Nevertheless, a synchronic treatment and a stake in historic perspective of the cultural, economic, political and social realities which find place in Oceania is necessary at the moment where choices are expressed themselves and apparently are divergent choices. The relations of the countries of the "zone" with those of " the outside " tend naturally to diversify, but ideology has for a long time united the Pacific way (at the same moment allegiance in oceanian multi-secular customs and allegiance in the Christian inheritance imported in the course of 19-th century) does not seem any more to be really operating, even when its contents, expressed in terms of spirituality, of quality of life and protection of resources and environment, seem more and more to be a pursuit of current events, on the scale of the world.

An area in grip on the modernity, the population of which compensates for its extreme dispersal with a big mobility and a strong urbanization

  The city, the irresistible vector of the modernity, major factor of sociological-spatial hierarchical organization

  As a result of the acceleration and of the overall expansion of means of transportation and communication, the handicap of the distance was considerably reduced during the last thirty years: Oceania is not perceived any more " at the end of the world ". Sites of transcontinental computer and banking services appeared during the last thirty years in the economic landscape of the Pacific island, without however having an influence comparable to the one coming under of military bases (islands of Oahu and Guam), from the conditioning of Pago, and transformation of the nickel (New Caledonia), of some copper, the gold and the petroleum (Papua - New Guinea) or still the industry of the tourism and leisure activities (the Hawaiian Islands, Tahiti-Moorea, Guam, Saipan, Viti Levu).
  On the scale of this immense region, exists only a single conglomeration of metropolitan scale, Honolulu (800.000 inhabitants.) This built its power, since the 1960's, on the mass tourism and more half of the Hawaiian Hotel Park (78.000 rooms). On the scale of the archipelago, the gross domestic product of which amounts to 33 billion dollars, tourism gets annually an added value of $ 12 billions, branch of industry contributing to it for $ 6 billion, the agriculture of plantation for $ 1 billion and the activity of the naval base (of first importance for the American power) for $ 3 billion. Due to the port and to an airport of international size, Honolulu maintains important business connections with California, Japan, Korea, China and Hong-Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia and the New Zealand, what makes a successful economic center of it on a international scale (A.V of $11 billion for the business, the transport and the services others than tourist). The group of Micronesia and the main thing of Polynesia are practically directly connected it, situated in its "outer suburbs" (by counting in hours of jet and not of train).
  Outside Honolulu, five conglomerations of average size developed in the oceanian island space. They make any figures of "sub-regional" poles: Suva (210.000 inhabitants.) shine on the archipelagoes of the central Pacific; Port Moresby (270.000 inhabitants.) on vast Papua New Guinea and the ten urbanized centers (of which Lae which counts at the moment 120.000 inhabitants.) very additionally on islands Salomon; Noumea (125.000 inhabitants.) on the New Caledonian archipelago, Vanuatu and islands Wallis and Futuna; Papeete (120.000 inhabitants.) On archipelagoes forming the French Polynesia and the Cook Islands; as for the conglomeration about 120.000 inhabitants. Grouping the districts of Agan ã, Tamuning, Barrigada, Mangilao and Dededo, in the island of Guam ( central third ), it shines only on Micronesia. The island - city of Guam is in fact only a simple relay of Honolulu in provisioning the islands (in the North of Ecuador), of urbanization of the islanders, American military base and tourist equipment for Japanese.
The four other conglomerations, situated in the South Pacific, are not under the command of this metropolis: Papeete is in regular contact with Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles and Auckland, as much as with Honolulu; Suva works mainly with Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland; Noumea is in direct drive on Paris, Tokyo, Sydney and Brisbane; Port Moresby has business connections with Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, Brisbane and Sydney, without however having the brilliance of the previous centers. Although, following the example of Honolulu, these five cities make business with the metropolises situated on the continental borders of the pond of the Pacific and sometimes even indeed beyond; they are of use of relay to the big networks which structure international trade, their ports and airports being necessarily used as places of transshipment of the people and the goods coming from islands or going there.
Because of important drift from the land led by the crisis of the agriculture of plantation intervened after Second World war, every political entity saw developing, since thirty - forty years, a strong urban area of 5.000 inhabitants. (Fongafale, on Funafuti's atoll, in Tuvalu's archipelago) in 35.000 inhabitants. (Honiara, in islands Salomon, before the eviction of Malaysians), in the administrative center. Containing public and deprived utilities, equipment of sport and leisure activities, businesses in any kinds, craft workshops even industrial, port and airport, these small cities "capitals" have an importance directly bound to the demographic volume of the island group placed under their command. One perceives so, through the Pacific Island, an urban hierarchy containing a metropolis of five conglomerations of intermediate importance, and about twenty minor cities. All these urban areas constitute foyers of animation and especially sources of material and intellectual wealth for the islanders: by the jobs which they propose in industrial activities and of services, by the products of large distribution which they give in the hyper-markets for sale, they look like frame privileged by insertion of the Oceanians in the modernity, even though here, more somewhere else, world culture (called " Occidental", because widely elaborated and locally imported by the Europeans and the Americans) is criticized, because considered too much materialist or not rather spiritualist.
  In the small countries of Micronesia and Polynesia, as well as in New Caledonia, it is not rare that the main thing of the population lives now in an urbanized frame, outside the traditional agricultural soils. A good part of this population remains regrettably under used and so beneficiary of very weak financial resources. Tending to become widespread, underemployment becomes vector of contesting and violence: fact is particularly worrisome in Port Moresby, Lae, Honiara and Port Vila, in a lesser measure in Papeete, in Suva and in conglomerations stretching on the atolls of Majuro ( Darrit-Uliga-Delap) and Tarawa ( Betio-Bairiki-Bonriki). From then on the fringe of population which feels "trapped" in the capitals of the small island countries wants critical, even aggressive, towards the modernity and towards its privileged frame of statement, the city (unknown in Oceania, before colonial period). There is therefore a situation of overhang between an important part of the population living suitably in the urban "sociological-system" and other one by not taking advantage or badly, reject it. The effort of authorities is so everywhere to try to contain dissatisfactions by politics of social security and improvement of the environment. It is moreover only to notice the general progress of the zones of spontaneous environment (squats) to understand the fascination which the city continues to exert on the island populations, in spite of the marginality in which some are confined.

  The collection of the oceanian islanders for one to be better off in oriental Australia, in the New Zealand, to Oahu, even in California

  The charm ceaselessly stronger of material and media attributes of the modernity tied with the shortage of jobs of workers or available employees in the small or average cities of the Pacific incite numerous Oceanians, applying for a non-agricultural work, to fall outside their island universe, towards the oriental coast of Australia, the New Zealand or the Occidental coast of the United States. Regrettably, due to the lack of qualification, they risk not to be recruited there or only to carry out there badly paid tasks. Only the migrants endowed with a robust training can think of succeeding in the English-speaking metropolises of the circumference of the Pacific, when they do not find to be used in the capital of their country.
  According to former colonial memberships and to the affinities ethnical-linguistics, migratory networks got organized bit by bit through the Pacific, to converge, in English-speaking environment, either Sydney and Auckland, in the Southwest of the Big Ocean, or towards Honolulu and Los Angeles, in the Northeast. Since the 1960's, one can judge the impact of the migrations of Pacific Islanders by referring quite at the same moment to the censuses of population of the countries of departure and to those of the countries of arrival. So, one notices, in 2000, that certain small oceanian island countries have more nationals outside their territory than inside: Nauru of which the mine of phosphate is in process of exhaustion; Wallis and Futuna, Niue and Tokelau, without significant local resources. The others see their Diaspora growing: Samoa, Tonga, states of Micronesia, Cook Islands, because their agricultural productions, even their industrial or tourist activities do not pay enough their equipment requirements and in services. Finally, the political situation made fled from Fiji 50.000 nationals of Indian origin, towards Vancouver, on the West coast of Canada ( 13.000 ), but also towards the urban metropolises of California ( 10.000 ), the New Zealand ( 11.000 ) and Australia ( 16.000 ), after the two coups d'état of 1987 and 2000: 2.735 are senior managers (747 architects and engineers, 540 jurists, 988 teachers, 462 doctors and veterinarians), more and more also small farmers whose land leases were not renewed by the Melanesian owners .
  Has the edge of 21-th century, the nationals of Nauru invested in real state and settled down in Honolulu, Sydney and Melbourne. Sydney welcomes also nationals of Salomon, Vanuatu and islands depending on the Papua - New Guinea; recently, one meets there Indian-Fijians and Tongians. Honolulu, which is the compulsory door to enter in the United States (and to obtain the very popular green card allowing to stay there in any legality), welcomes for its part an important contingents of Micronesians ( 14.000 ) and Samoans ( 13.000 ). Some continue then towards Los Angeles (at least 6.000 in the first case, about 15.000 in the second).  
By the tourist industry using little qualified workforce, Guam is use as relay to Micronesians in their progress towards Honolulu, then the American continent (10.000 take turns there for thirty years); Pago Pago, administrative center of American oriental Samoa, due to the enormous canning factories of tuna, plays the same role for the Polynesians, "sucking up" in particular the nationals of independent Occidental Samoa who often have a part of their extended family in the American part of the archipelago, for " to tun back " them on the island of Oahu and the region of Los Angeles. Therefore, we count 12.000 Samoans resulting from American Samoa 16.000 from formerly New Zealand Samoa between the Hawaiian Islands and California. On the whole, the territories of American sovereign power welcome, in their statutory variety, 150.000 persons who are recognized of oceanian ancestry (Polynesian or Micronesian).
  Auckland, which constitutes an alternative in Honolulu, to the Polynesians of west Samoa , candidates for the expatriation, stays the major destination of the native of Tonga, even the exclusive place of expatriation of the nationals of Niue and Tokelau and Cook islands, former New Zealand possessions. The conglomeration of Auckland is increasingly used by Polynesians (including by French-speaking Tahitians) as place of transit towards Sydney. Globally, one estimates in New Zealand, at 18.000 the expatriates of Cook islands , 35.000 the Samoans and 7.000 Tongians (6.000 other Tongians lives in the United States, 3.000 finally in Australia). 70.000 migrants who have a sociological and cultural personality close to the one of those Maori 200.000 autochthons are in competition with these last ones on the market of labor force. But, the most recent and the most significant migratory contribution which registers in New Zealand consists of the arrival of contingents of Asiatic who, due to their professional activities (lawyers and Indian bookkeepers, Pakistani doctors, storekeepers and Vietnamese restaurant owners), strengthen the cosmopolitan character of the urban society secreted by the populating of European origin and this to the detriment of the however modest influence of the Maori community.
In the territories of French sovereign power, migratory phenomenon tends, since the beginning of 1990's, to limit itself to the arrival of Wallisians and Futunians to Noumea and of Tahitians in metropolitan France. New Caledonia does not play any more the role of release of the demographic full excess recorded in French Polynesia. Noumea's conglomeration contains all the same a Tahitian contingent strong of more than 5.000 and a community Wallisian and Futunian close to 18.000 members; an actual of 2.400 Vanuatu comes to complete this panorama of the oceanian mobility in favor of New Caledonia. In fact, the most original migratory element which develops for some years is the arrival, part-time (corresponding in boreal winter), to Noumea as to Papeete, of Frenchman from the metropolitan wishing to take advantage in best of their pension (and tax exemptions, when their stay there is dominant). Just like what develops on the coast of Australian in Queensland, Florida or on Côte d'Azur, peninsula of Noumea, the South and coast under - the-wind of Tahiti begin a development as a "Riviera ".
  If in the two French-speaking cities of average importance, the pressure of the immigration seems to fall in a significant way with regard to what it was during the previous four decades, in the English-speaking metropolises of the border of the Pacific, on the contrary immigration increases and diversifies. So a strong migratory current from the Southeast Asia, quite particularly of Vietnam and the Philippines, is in place. The new migrants settle down first and foremost in Sydney, in Melbourne, in Auckland (Vietnamese), in Honolulu and in Los Angeles (Filipinos and Vietnamese). The oceanian space in what it has of more dynamic sees so strengthening its multicultural character, but it does not mean for all that questioned the dominant position of the culture elaborated by the populating of European origin.
  In the same way as what one notice in the big cities of the former colonial powers, it can make appear in certain sectors of these cities - metropolis reactions of hostility against the recent migrants. However, the urban societies of the Pacific present enough of plasticity so that eventually the insertion of the newcomers comes true in good conditions. Although it is, to limit risks of failure and see in this case an alternative, the families of oceanian or Asiatic migrants the best organized tend to settle down jointly in Australia and in California, in Honolulu and in Auckland, in the two "extremities" of the Pacific.
  In Australia, the "post-industrial" modernity which fascinates so much the oceanian islanders favored the intensification of the preeminent of three big poles in grip of long date on the Pacific, namely three conglomerations multimillionaires of Melbourne (3,2 M inhabitants.) Sydney (3,8 M inhabitants.) and Brisbane. With the contribution of the "Riviera " of Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, Brisbane (2,5 M inhabitant.) Present on the oriental coast of Australia an extension and an exceptional dynamism , confirming the impulse that the holding of World Fair put in evidence in 1988. In 2000, the holding of the Olympic Games consolidated Sydney as major pole of the oceanian space. By the particular brilliance, this demonstration placed Australia and, additionally its neighbors of the Pacific, for a while , in the " center of the world " and of the media life, while, traditionally, one confines them in "suburb", what confirm most of the cartographic projections of the Earth.
  This report is significant of the, as matter of fact, limited interest which our contemporaries carry for Oceania. Actually, few seaways or airways cross the Big Ocean, especially since the generalization of the container ship and the jumbo jets. The Occidental facade of the American continent looks really on the Pacific only since Vancouver, San Francisco and Los Angeles and especially in the direction of the Hawaiian Islands, of Oriental Asia, Australia or New Zealand. Panama is above all a relay between the two maritime facades of the United States. In the other extremity of the Pacific, Singapore fusses essentially with the Asiatic countries registered in its nearness. The "road" the USA - ASIA of the Northeast (Japan, Korea, and China) does not influence at all the development of the oceanian countries: the "populated" Pacific is far, for the main thing quartered in the south hemisphere.
  Nevertheless, the present excitement in a recurring way in Indonesia or in the Philippines, the difficulties of Taiwan face to face with the People's Republic of China ( RPC) never leave insensible when one lives in Honolulu, Guam, Auckland or Sydney, even in Port Moresby, Suva, Papeete or Noumea and when one makes to it some politics or business. With the APEC, countries of the ASEAN and the Forum of the Pacific make common cause. The qualifier of " austral-Asian " attached to the "continental" part of Oceania (Australia and New Guinea, to which one adds sometimes by convenience New Zealand) takes so all its sense. In France, on the other hand, only the persons having family or moral and material interests to Noumea or Papeete follow the affairs of the Pacific. For the biggest number, this area remains too much perceived as a " Australian-American lake " so that a particular motivation is daylight. The weak rate of participation in the referendum on the future of New Caledonia very well demonstrated it at its; time ( 1988 ).

The protective of traditions millenniums, subject of pride for the Oceanians

  Unity and variety of the age-old tradition, always operating

  The perception of the Pacific realized from the observation of the traditional societies is obviously different from that produced by repository cosmopolitan of the modernity (migration, urbanization, industrial activities and trade services, extensive usage of the on-line data processing, reference to the democratic State and to the principles egalitarians, laymen and scientists). According to the level of observation that one has oceanian cultural realities, one can quite at the same moment end in a profound unity or in an extreme variety of the group, in inflexible commitments in the tradition or in propensity in the interbreeding of values society.
  The elements of unity should be looked for in the intimate and sacred relation which every man and, by extension, any human group based on the relationship maintains with its " ground of election " which, by the agrian-pedological qualities, for a long time got him elements indispensable to its food and which confers an identity on its descent. If the notion of " meat safe " connected with any soil lost many of its efficiency in 2000, at least in islands by high level of life, the notion of "ID card" remains on the other hand actual for every Oceanian, that he is or not crossed by European or by Asiatic.
  The elements of variety are certainly the most visible, because contingents of the big variety of natural environments (big lands, high islands, low islands, atolls), ecological fame which are often weakened by the passage of cyclones, the arrival of big aridity or the volcanic activity. Now until the realization of industrial sites and urban organizations, intervened during period colonial and strengthened since, any oceanian society had to dedicate all its energy to the fruiting and to the protection of the agricultural soils and pisiculturals (rivers, lagoons and cliffs were the object of an appropriation in the same way as the appeared lands). The production of foods constituted the essential activity of the human groups, the leaders and the priests must themselves participate, in the symbolic plan, in the considered effort of development indispensable to the perpetuity of any community.
  In the traditional societies of Polynesia and Micronesia and in those of the oriental Melanesia, the populations stratified in an aristocratic and religious order must protect soils, by weapons and magic, and an order of the managers to fruit them. On the scale of any local or regional community, existed a learned balance among representatives of the " old occupants ", inalienable owners of the agricultural soils, and representatives of the "newcomers" (towards the migratory history) on whom were conferred pre-eminent functions in control and in animation of the populations ( political and religious leaders).
  This structural duality is always operating in a big number of islands; outside the Big Earth of New Caledonia, where the impact of colonial organizations was particularly important, it could be always observed in the Loyalty Islands . On the other hand, on the atolls of Micronesia where available funds in arable land were always extremely limited, even holder eventually accumulated influence on the people and the ownership of soils, leading actually the production of an almost-feudal system. At present the position of the feudal lords is obviously questioned: because the soil and the lagoon feed only marginally the populations, the members of the people recommend more and more an egalitarianism of right.
  The release of the migration towards Guam, Oahu, then California avoids at the moment explosive demonstrations, connected to statutory dissatisfactions. As a result of a strong demographic pressure, of numerous islands of Micronesia, Polynesia, even the smallest islands of Melanesia see leaving regularly the main thing of their young adults towards the big city centers of the peaceful region. Disparity access to the land just as much as the depreciation of agricultural activities explain this "leak" which allows in return, by incomes gained by the work in city, to improve the material conditions of the daily life of those that stayed in their villages of origin, avoiding a questioning of the age-old land basic rules. But, the other side of medal, when an islander having made fortune " at the Whites " returns at home with the idea to build there an industrial and commercial structure, he inevitably has to take into account usual rules, otherwise he will be one day excluded from the community. From then on, some young criticize the traditional legislation, considering them unfit in the development of the "modernity", in particular in status of the individuals, the development of trade activities and functioning of democratic institutions. The institutional turbulence that know for some years Melanesian States, those for that Custom has a value of major rule, can explain themselves by contradictions inherent to the traditional speech in management of the facts of modernity.

  Custom and modernity, a complex dialectic

  In every case, the rule of life of the Oceanians finds its the originality of age-old usage value: to lose " custom " would be lose the soul and all which gives sense to the life in group. Outside the districts which shelter the expatriates and the descendants of colonists, in the island cities, the oceanian collective life (urban or rural) always get organized so around elementary political groups or "clans". In societies to be been able to inherited, a genealogical interpretation allows to organize into a hierarchy their "lineage" in "ancestors" and "younger children", them some producing the "leaders", symbols of the command, the others the "servants", without which orders had no efficiency. This binary relation "elder son - younger "child" is profoundly anchored in mentalities, explaining that certain doors - words on the scene of the modern politics remain subjected in their opinions to the will expressed discreetly by the usual leaders. Also, solidarity between " people of the same dugout ", of the same valley of big earth or the even small island, remain strong, including in the migration towards an important urban area. Whether it is in situ or in Diaspora, ancestral solidarity is relieved with the Christian churches, in particular those of the Protestant confession. Post-colonial administrative armature itself often takes into account the organization of the pre-European space. So, in Tahiti, the current municipalities steal into the former territories of local headmen, the mayors resuming partially the tasks of mediation registered in the tradition, towards the administered, when they are Polynesian or " half " Maohi.
  The will of implanting of any action in a body of age-old customs strongly influenced the constitutions of the oceanian countries endowed with the attributes of the sovereign power. In Fiji, for example, the Parliament contains a "Upper House" reserved in the most prestigious of the usual Melanesian leaders (of whom the current president is other than Rabuka, initiators of the coups d'état of 1987), while the "Lower House", elected in universal suffrage, according to a complex mode of level-headedness between ethnic-cultural communities, welcomes collectively Melanesians, Indo-Fijians, Polynesian representing the island of Rotuma and the descendants of Europeans or more or less crossed Asiatic. Ideological membership in ancestral customs explains also the demand of the Kanak people, in New Caledonia, so that the French citizens of Melanesian origin can continue to benefit from a private individual right, even to find him if, of adventure, one of their ancestors had abandoned him; it is also at the origin of the implementation of a " usual senate ", necessarily consulted by the Congress, for any subject implying the ground substratum of the New Caledonian archipelago and its native populating, in particular within the framework of the elaboration of " laws of country ".
  Generally speaking, oceanian societies as their homologues of oriental Asia draw their contemporary legitimacy from a tradition millennium, quite particularly in control and in organization of the geographic space. In addition, if, of adventure, their members have no large mastering of modern technologies, these communities are absolutely not hang-ups. In spite of reported setbacks these last years by world press, cultural prestige of China and economic success of Japan and the "Dragons" of oriental Asia consolidate feeling distrust expressed of long date to the representatives of the Occidental world, their techniques and their values. It is necessary, on this point, to admit that the local speakers representing Europe or North America have only very rarely shown, by their behavior, that " West " possessed also respectful rules of life of people, their customs and their environment. Aggravated competition wanted by the Americans on the scale of the world for better setting up their inclination to hegemony is perfectly decoded and stigmatized.
  Towards the importance of the horticultural sets working during the centuries that preceded the implanting of the Europeans, it is indubitable that existed in Oceanian Island a sociological-spatial organization perfectly built, including simple but strict procedures of regulation. At the moment, even though a lot of these procedures are scorned, remain a multitude of efficient traditional social organizations, sometimes even strong " headmen " of several thousand persons, even though horticultural activity has no more, everywhere, the economic and ritual importance of the " time of the old men ". Also, dichotomy perceived on the big lands, by the first Europeans, among "sailors", living on the littoral plains, and " people of earth ", living in mountains and in the internal valleys always persists locally, when colonial impact was limited; Subsidized exchanges among people of the seaside and the one inside the lands can even continue. The practice of such exchanges, donations*} and counter- donations, is a constant of the oceanian societies, engaging the generations for centuries.
  Also as we are often had (and afterward) the impression of an immovable world. In fact, the mystification, or so subtle manipulation of history does not allow, at first sight , to become aware of movements of population (as a result of wars or natural disasters) and of the periodic questioning of ideas and, this making, changes in the distribution of powers between groups recognizing themselves from the same culture. The frequent neglect of mention of recent coups d'état by world press does not allow to feel the foyers of crisis and to analyze the genesis of carried by it. One stays there so in considerations often dues the big gap in regard too realities.
  So, it is infinitely easier to remind that, to protect itself against the devastating power of the people or the nature, elaborated, in the course of time, vast inter-island networks of alliance the effectiveness of which materialized in the identity of place-names in taken away archipelagoes some of the others of several hundreds, even several thousand kilometers. The networks that have now no more utility in provisioning in agricultural foodstuffs or in participation in an expedition, keep nevertheless an aptness in the political or religious games of influence. The Christian churches took advantage quite particularly of the existence of these networks to propagate, from island to island, during two centuries, " the word of the Christ ", the membership in churches seeming then to the traditional headmen as an excellent means to strengthen by widening their "radius of action". First, this strategy had materialized successfully in the distribution of the consumption ritualized of a decoction of Piper methysticum, called kava in Polynesian language; this local beverage stays a major sign of sociability and good manners; its sharing seals traditionally any important act, so any political alliance.
  In Melanesian islands where political power was not organized into a hierarchy according to the genealogical principle, but on the basis of a competition of " big people " (big men) for the obtaining of appreciated honorary titles, legitimacy was a function of the possibility of capitalizing, then and redistributing in a festive way big quantities of foods (tubers, rhizomes and dirty) and symbolic fineries (maritime shells and teeth of pigs). Every time, the realization of the test giving place to the obtaining of the wished rank implied the participation of relatives vast parents networks and of their marital allies.
  The use of the terms of relationship to formalize various social statuses (ancestors - younger children; uncle - nephew; son - father - big father) and to appoint the political persons who are attached to it in a societies with strong hierarchical structure, and who constitute fixed "beacons" of traditional communities, explains careful formalism prevailing for centuries among individuals having a role important to assume in the public life: one is always to bend its personal behavior in the direction of the reciprocity " inherited from his fathers ".   Also, in the case of New Caledonia who knows the juxtaposition of a traditional agrarian society and an urban society organized by the colonization, the natives (quite particularly those living in a rural frame) they can have only a perception moved by the actors stemming from the colonial populating. The behavior of these last ones, personal, is at the same moment envied, because a big margin of freedom is left with them, and slandered, because judged against the principle of solidarity which imposes on the individuals to merge in their reference group: the "person" is traditionally the domestic group of which each constituting person is conceives only as a simple "member"; from then on the personality can not be individual in the sense where the nationals of the european-American culture use it.
  This tradition is felt as " the social assurance " which every individual is seen conferring on his birth by his family. Each knows that if he loses it, it is the frame of statement of his personality that disappears. Therefore, even though the daily exercise of the tradition seems binding, every individual watches not to break the elements of solidarity, which base his identity. Actually, all the advance civilization advance value structuring the domestic solidarity, but in Oceania it is glorified in such a point as the ideology of the communities of multi-secular implanting is always strongly soaked with it.

The Pacific, a modern concept of which content remains to be clarified

  Waited and implied with a terminology

  The emergence of the term Asia-Pacific during 1990's gives the feeling that the Big Ocean and its islands do not form any more a "quite" completely as claim it by the Oceanians. The autonomy of the peaceful "region" does not seem any more evident. Nevertheless, unlike the previous centuries, when by facts of agricultural clearing, mining development or conquest warrior, the big regions of the world were periodically reshaped, in the edge of 21-th century world seems finally accomplished (even though it knows a multitude of conflicts), inventoried and widely equipped (certainly, with sometimes striking disparities). The dialectic of the conservation substitutes itself little by little from the one of the conquest (pioneer or colonial). The mediation of tensions does not make any more by geographic movement of antagonisms, but by reduction in situ of sources of constraint or conflict. From then on, the speech of the consensus produced by the oceanian islanders sets all the value in a modernity which holds less and less count internationalist ideologies evoking an indefinite progress (liberalism and socialism), becoming attached much more to the principles of protection and valuation of the patrimonies of the various human societies.
  Through the evocation of significant lines of modernity and tradition, relations center - suburb with different scales, the area of the Pacific appears in fact as a complex space and, as very well expressed it B. Anthaume and J. Bonnemaison in 1988, " hideaway" structure : in the widest, the Pond of the Pacific which covers 25 millions of km2; then Asia-Pacific including Oceania; finally in the heart of the device the islands of the Pacific. Obviously, this asks sometimes to be clarified. So, the New Zealand is the sum of two big islands, but rest "outside" of Pacific island while welcoming an important Polynesian community; Papua - New Guinea trims as Australia in the continental part of Oceania, but maybe included in the Pacific island because it participates, in spite of the mass, in the problem of islands, beyond by the fact that its nationals trim from Melanesian traditions .
  The perception of the Pacific is so extremely fluid, but never indistinct, function after all of the subject in debate and the actors who participate in it. Australia and the New Zealand can be members of the Forum of the pacific Islands, initially Forum of the south of Pacific, in the highly-rated of the Papua - New- Guinea, Micronesian's states, islands the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Nauru, Salomon, Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa, Tokelau, Niue and Cook, without for all that representing " the Pacific ". They are the small sovereign States which make it, sometimes in association with the autonomous or dependent territories, as within the Community of the Pacific (initially Committee of the South Pacific ) and of the Organization of the Games of the Pacific. France, United Kingdom and the United States, just as much as Australia and New Zealand are members of the Community of the Pacific, in conformance with the preservation of their sovereignty on certain oceanian islands, but remain of course perceived as " outside powers ". As for New Zealand, it can not be always identified by the oceanian islanders as one of Pacific Island, as a result of the dominant place of the populating of European origin. As, besides, Tokelau remains affiliated to it and the associated Islands of Niue and Cook , it always appears, rightly or wrongly, as a " colonial power ". In blow on, it is " a metropolis " of which one looks for the charm, but which does not constitute one "at home".
  Although it is it, in the present as in the close future, identity speeches do not have to make lose us of sight ternary structure of vast group called Pacific and his variety of interest:
  - An axis structuring Los Angeles (California) - Honolulu (Hawaiian Islands) - Sydney (Australia) - Auckland (New Zealand), participating actively in the cosmopolitan modernity which developed on the scale of the world (Global modernity), which structures and provides island world while observing attentively the evolution of oriental, received Asia at the same moment as a privileged economic partner and a politico-cultural area potentially dangerous, in case of assertion of the Chinese power or in case of formalization of a coherent inter-state community; on the basis of the grouping of the countries of the Association of South-East Asia Nations ( ASEAN), a free trade area is already in place;
  - Around the Australian-American axis, around the small island countries in the weak natural potential (Micronesia, Polynesia except the Hawaiian Islands, small and average islands of Melanesia), incompletely valued or subjected to the fluctuations in the international markets (Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua - short story Guinea), which always have an overdrawn balance of trade; when their territory is too much restricted, they have an inclination to have their people emigrating arrived in the force of the age, the demographic depression which results from it provoking then a profound sentiment of marginality; when they do not lose their people, these small countries present an annoying tendency to be seen governmental power dissolving, the local cultural to aggravate and consequently the efforts of economic and social promotion to degrade;
  - A continental border (from Singapore to Kamchatka), integrating three archipelago countries situated in common ownership (Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines), observing closely China and America, trading intensely with the whole world, but looking really in the direction of Oceania only since the economic crisis of 1997. Only Japan, already commercial partner privileged by Australia, tempts really an operation of seduction through the action of the Center of the Islands of the Pacific, inaugurated in Tokyo in 1996. The interest of the Japanese business circles always confines, for the main thing, to the islands of Guam, Saipan and the Hawaiian Islands, quite situated in the American sphere, where they acquired dominating parts in the field of the tourism, of the hotel business and the leisure activities: it is necessary to count on the whole, for three destinations, 10 million tourists on average a year, 7 million of which Japanese, since the end of 1990's. As for the " Chinese communities of ultramarine ", they turn to maritime China and its megalopolises and to Taiwan, guard of the tradition millennium and especially particularly dynamic economic pole towards the modesty of its surface, the actual of its population and its natural resources.

  The particular position of Australia and the New Zealand

  "Giant" to the oceanian scale, hardly "average" in the Asiatic scale, Australia, populated with 20 million inhabitants, in big majority of migrants come from Europe and from their descent, remains always perceived as " extreme point of the West ". Now, in the contexts of Oceania and Asia-Pacific, one glorifies " the native ": pass for " stranger-autochthonous " constitute a handicap, all the more difficult to be reduced that Australia of 2000 did not always take out its aboriginal populating of the marginality where the colonists - confined it for more than two centuries.
To avoid international condemnation and concomitant political insulation, intellectual circles and in their continuation the political Labor circles of obedience tried, at the beginning of 1980's, to promote the idea of a continuance between Asia and Australia: the concept of " Austral-Asia ", etymologically " of the South of Asia ", was born so to qualify the set Australia - New Zealand to which adds Papua - New Guinea when one does not integrate it in the island Pacific. The Australians were then obsessed by the demographic dynamism and the speed of the development of the countries of free market economy of Southeast Asia. They wanted to protect themselves against any "invasion". Today, in view of the increasing importance of the Asiatic in this country, the "south - Asiatic" connotation posted with certain Australian circles presents more aptness than when it was expressed, but the image of Australia " land of Whites " remains actual and the fear of the less present invasion of the "Yellow".
  Moreover, the turnover of Australia intervened in 1999, about Indonesia, which led United Nations to intervene in oriental Timor, unmasked the strategic axis of continental-states of the southern zone: to be the partner privileged by the United States to whom the Australians "whites" find the constituent elements of their collective identity, including recently a "condolence" for the " autochthonous people " aborigine, the equivalent of Indian Nations of North America. The Australians of an advanced age do not forget either that it thanks to the entry to war of the United States that they not have been invaded by the Japanese in 1941. In return, the Australians participated in the re-conquest of the Pacific between 1942 and 1945, then supported military actions led with the American troops in continental Asia (Korea and Vietnam).
  Outside this privileged relation, the New Zealand holds towards Australia role devolved to Canada by the United States: that to be a partner of nearness, united in term of fundamental choices because having in common a dominant English-speaking culture. But, as the French-speaking community of Quebec gets in Canada a stimulating personality " recessive ", the Maori community gets in the New Zealand an original value: by the participation in the Polynesian civilization, it creates a "opening" in the direction of the Pacific, by its; demographic weight, its social frame and its cultural productions, it obliged New Zealand authorities to revise their vision of the world, strongly indexed to Great Britain, and their policy of assimilation. In 2000, the Polynesian cultural pillar balances the British pillar: initiation into the Maori language is compulsory for very young schooled in primary education; Marae, traditional houses of meeting are a part of townscape; the usual lands are recognized sacred. And even though a competition exists among Polynesians of " the inside " (Maori) and of " the outside " (Pacific Islanders), the oceanian islanders feel generally more in the ease in New Zealand than in Australia. Nevertheless, cosmopolitan character and multi-ethnic marked with millionaire conglomerations pleases the expatriates. Because, if the natives is lived as the cardinal value in the contexts of oceanian island and Asia, in Australia and in the New Zealand, the multi-cultural which is perceived as "the" factor of equity by the ethnic-cultural minorities of oceanian or Asiatic origin: membership in the pluralism seems in instance bound to the fact that one lives " outside the natural reference space ".
  One notices in parallel, that the beginning of recognition of the aboriginal fact was realized by the Australian society deriving from the European populating, in the stride of the Olympic Games and the victory of young athlete Cathy Freeman. As often in the "young" countries, the development of the sport is in Australia and in the New Zealand a major phenomenon of society and culture, the political consequence of which can, outside, seem disproportionate. In fact, it is the cement that unites the Australians and New - Zealanders, beyond their variety of previous history and customs. Value recognized by the Australians and/or the New Zealanders in rugby, tennis, swimming, sailing or athletics consolidates besides their brilliance in the Oceanian and world scales. Symptomatic fact, the best Samoan rugby players or Tongians play at the moment in the provincial selections of Australia and New Zealand, engaged in the annual international tournament called Great Twelve.
  The gap of these two countries with regard to the Asiatic nations seems also to erase because some of them joined the choice of Sydney, to the detriment of Peking, during the vote of allocation of the Olympic Games of 2000, intervened in Monaco in September, 1993 (what mentions no written source appeared since on this subject). In this occasion, preceding some years the "retrocession" of Hong-Kong, the behavior of the Chinese officials participating in the committee of Peking's candidature, already stigmatized for their responsibility in the dramatic events of 1989 arisen on the place Tian An-men, had been considered too arrogant. It is not said as well as the Chinese of outer-sea did not want, furtively, to give a lesson of "savoir-vivre" to the Chinese of the continent and "to clear of responsibility themselves" face to face with native nationals of their host countries. In it, can be, and in a cyclical way, Australia was able to constitute a stake for the Asiatic.
  Of more significant appearance is permanent invitation from which benefits Papua - New Guinea in the meetings of the ASEAN, intergovernmental organization which regroups Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Thailand, Singapore, Brunei, Myanmar (or Burma), Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. As for the economic Association of the countries of the Pacific ( APEC), it could have in the future a mobilizing importance, as far as the Asiatic countries which knew a grave blow of stop in their economic growth, in 1997 , have for idea to build a common front with the small island States, to thwart durably the directives of the IMF and, more, the leadership of United-States in the region, even though their diplomats assert seeing in the American presence a " factor of balance and prosperity "; They imply for the occasion to want to avoid in quite taken a risky confrontation with the People's Republic of China ( RPC) which was, for centuries, "the" power to which one had to pay tribe.
  With the implementation, in 1999 , of East Asia Free Trade Area begins to be set up a "common market" of Asia with liberal dominant which, if it succeeds, will attract inevitably to it the countries of Oceania. Ten years to come are going to be on this point decisive. However, in the meantime, the countries of the Pacific will have to clarify the contents of their personality and the role that they want collectively to assume on the international scene.

Which likely problem for the countries of the Pacific in the 21-th century?

  The limits of the "geostrategic" pension and the effects of the MIRAB ECONOMY popularized in the small island countries during the last thirty years

  At the time of changing century, the Pacific islands still too often looks like "poor relation" of the modernity. Because the demography pushed, the politics of cooperation that can be there led has inclined to be limited. Nevertheless, in recent past, States and territories of this region of the world were courted with major powers. Indeed, following the definition, by United Nations (agreement of Montego Bay, on 1982), of " exclusive economic zones " ( ZEE) of 200 nautical miles, these island countries saw their revalued geopolitical interest, in particular in development of the big oceanic fishing. Certain countries contain besides interesting potentialities in the domains of the fish farming and the pearl-culture of lagoons, at least for productions of small quantity, but big quality.
  But, with the collapse of the soviet power and folds strategic the United States of the Southeast Asia (at the end of 1980's - the beginning of 1990's), the financing of States of Micronesians or Polynesian, by means of agreements on fishing, does not seem any more so profitable, especially since in 2000 one noticed the complete saturation of the world market of the tuna. The House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States has for the occasion quickly criticized usage made by the American help invested in this field and related industries (1,6 $ billions): " factories and disused stores, collapsing ".
  Besides, the mines are between the hands of some international consortiums, on which the local governments have few grips, what prevents them from pulling the best profit of the extracted resource. Only military bases, in particular that of Kwajalian ( Marshall Islands), specialized in the reception of missiles launched by the United States since California, remain profitable. The compensatory incomes in American nuclear experiments (of Bikini and Enewetak) and French (of Mururoa and Fangatofa) bring also, for a while, a budgetary stability important for the State " of free association " islands the Marshall Islands and in the autonomous government of French Polynesia. But, quickly, the strategic pension of the small island countries risks to decline: Since the signature by France and the United States of the treaty of denuclearization of the Pacific the South, drafted in Rarotonga (Islands Cook) in 1985, the " protection " of the "populated" Pacific, so hoped by the Oceanians, seems acquired. Atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan, in 1945 , terribly impressed people of the Pacific, where from a rigorous "pacifism", set up as political doctrine altogether of Oceania, in particular by the Protestant churches which for two centuries try to realize in this region of the world " kingdom of God ", where peace becomes an absolved principle, outside the space and outside the time.
  If The United-States or Australia have to protect themselves on their margins and inevitably to base their security on a profitable politics for their neighbors, one does not see all the same which could question their vital interests, especially since the pact USA - Australia - New Zealand always runs ( ANZUS). From then on, it is not necessary to expect that these three powers make many efforts in "sponsoring" the small oceanian States. These already complain about it.
  As for France, the interests are not really military or economic any more (the role of the industry of the nickel in New Caledonia should be put in perspective), but rather cultural (bound partially to the French-speaking solidarity), so recovering from resources less consequent than first. The overseas territories have at the moment infrastructures deserving of developed countries, often oversized, so much that the populations served, are weak outside capitals. As a consequence and considering a high costs of investment, the margin of progress of the savings of these territories is going certainly to limit itself to the release of the Riviera which took in Tahiti and around Noumea. It can there have also creation of one or two new units of treatment of the nickel, of 50.000t of global capacity, is the equivalent of the unity at present production in Doniambo.
  By doubling the production of metal, New Caledonia would have indubitably the possibility of valuing her mining capital in 100 %, on the basis of the best extracted annual production; it would make essentially to the detriment of the Japanese foundry, the current addressees closely of half of ores and which could very well turn to the Papua - New Guinea which is going soon to open a nickel mine in Madang's province. Still it is necessary that the world situation allows it. Projects to come in new Caledonia would be financially profitable only in a situation of preservation on a long duration of high prices on the world market (loosening from 1,5 to 2 billions F. of added value) and still if Voisy Bay's big industrial project, in Canada, is not born. For the nickel as for quite other raw material, the world market is not indeed stretchable in the infinity.
  The economic rooms for maneuver seem always reduced in the island Pacific, what makes that, by compensation, the Oceanians look for legitimacy and for fame on the institutional ground. As far as all the island societies obtained now to be able to control themselves by them same, the concepts of " full sovereignty " and, in defect, of " fight for the independence " lost many of their mobilizing power, even though this continent lived a late decolonization and, for some, unfinished.
  With a thirty years recession, one realizes although the MIRAB ECONOMY (the MIDDLE for "migrations", R for " remittance " that is " repatriation of capital amassed by the migrants ", Has for "help and B for "bureaucracy"), promoted by the small States, is not the panacea in " durable development ". The application was realized under the aegis of institutions depending on United Nations (UNCTAD, ESCAP), on the Community of the Pacific, on the Forum and on its economic organ South Pacific Bureau for Economic Cooperation. Nevertheless, each forgot that the notion of "durable development" could be relevant only if it leaned on stable natural, human and financial resources. Now, public help in the development ( APD) lavished by the United States, the European Union, Japan, France, Australia, and the New New Zealand, Canada, United Kingdom, Korea or Taiwan remains cyclical. it is regularly negotiated and " subjected to resolute conditions ", what means implicitly that it can be reduced. It can be also blocked, as it was case for Fiji, after the coups d'état of 1987 and that of the 2000. Without fixed "guarantee" of outside incomes, the island situation remains so unpredictable.
  The vagary of the negotiation makes vagary the public opinions: that confidence loses heart, that a conflict of scale, such a coup d'état or an outside confrontation of the type " war of the Bay ", starts and a tourist destination can be strongly underestimated. In 1991, the Hawaiian Islands lost 3 billion dollars of incomes and Guam more than a quarter of one billion. In 1987-89, then in 2000, it is in the tour of Fiji to see disappear the main thing of its tourist income. The fluctuations in the international tourism are problematic.
  For lack of sufficient inner markets, the small island countries are extremely vulnerable. It is what explains that in New Caledonia, within the Kanak party of independence, some think in maintains of a " co-sovereignty " with the French State such as it spring from the application of the law of wide autonomy of March, 1999, rather than to assume the exercise of the full sovereign power which would constitute an enormous political risk-taking, considering the chronic fragmentation of the independence movement, but also of the automatic loss of 4 billions F. on the 5 billions coming at present from transfers of metropolitan public money (wanted by the agreement of Matignon in 1988, confirmed by the agreement of Noumea in 1998). Agreements of cooperation can possibly compensate for the expenses of sovereign power lost (1 billion F. In 2000), but they can not obviously include the costs of social welfare and those emanating from the payment for the civil servants of the French State who work in 2000 in decentralized administrations implanted to Noumea, in "wilderness" and in islands (in particular in the national education and the health service) and who will disappear in the day of the independence, the services of the Exchequer taking care obviously to find them a new destination within the French space of sovereign power.

  The search for alienating, compensatory forms of support for the "colonial" metropolises
 
  In 2000, the small island States of the Pacific find cooperation with " outside powers " close relations (Australia, the New Zealand) less gratifying than when they establish, by a municipality will, their Forum. Certainly, there is an agreement between two "regional" powers and their oceanian neighbors: South Pacific Regional Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement ( SPARTECA) allows for example to harmonize markets, since 1981. But Australia and New Zealand do not need the Pacific island Pacific to assure their development: 60 % of productions agricultural-pastoral and mineral raw materials which they supply to Japan; the Pacific island interest them only in the margin, for the drainage of finished products not absorbed by their inner market. These two countries moreover established of long date a "common market" to make mass with regard to the big actors of the international economy that are the ALENA, EEC / EU, Japan and, can be tomorrow, the countries of the ASEAN, through the EAFTA.
  First partner of Australia, Japan tries at present to consolidate its "marketing" face to face oceanian island countries by a skillful cultural action. Sasakawa foundation distributes so annually 80 million dollars in the small States of the Pacific. It is true that resemblance of behavior can be noted at the national's of the island and peninsular space of oriental Asia and to Micronesians and Polynesians. After all, Micronesians and Polynesians have the same cultural collection as the Malays, the Indonesians and the Filipinos, even certain characteristics noted at the Japanese. The development of complicity among Asiatic and Oceanian can so progress towards a real solidarity of zone, if, of adventure, the attitudes of the Americans and in their following the Australians became too binding, beyond the fact that they are already too condescending. Now, in the Pacific, as in Asia, one supports with difficulty to be "humiliated" or " to lose the face ".
  For the small island countries, two non-alienating axes of search for support are at present perceptible, in a situation which remains full of chances:
  - The non-governmental organizations of international obedience, having an influence on the United Nations, in particular in the big forums where struggle the big problems of the world of tomorrow, in particular in protection of fragile environments, in which trim the low islands and the atolls; the international Union of conservation of the nature ( UICN), Green Peace, Amnesty International, different foundations anchored on the coast of the West of the United States and Canada, in Australia, in the New Zealand or in Japan invested a lot in surveillance of the world climate and the sea level, the protection of zones containing sites of mining origin, promotion of the feminine condition and the respect for the natives peoples; The participation of the parties militating for the political ecology in the island countries of the Pacific in the first world congress of "Greens" foreseen in Australia, in April, 2001, well illustrates this axis of cooperation;
  - The regional groupings of States being able to assure sponsorship within the framework of multilateral actions: the European Union and the ASEAN establish on this plan there partners for the islanders of the Pacific; for the group Australia - New Zealand, the perception of the partnership with the EU and the ASEAN joins in a different context, of drainage of national products (milk and by-products, cereal, meats) And of macro-regional geostrategic orientations, that is on the scale of what one calls collectively " Pacific-Asia ". The fact that the countries of the Forum ended with Europe of the agreements of fishing in 1990 shows the beginning of realization on this second axis of cooperation. It is the same of the participation of the EU, at the level of a million Euro, in the financing of the Festival of the arts of the Pacific, considered the end of 2000 Noumea. However, the implanting of the seat of the delegation of the European Union for the Pacific to Suva, near the seat of the Forum, underlines the will shown by european-oceanian cooperation which, it is necessary to remind it, joins of long date in the subsidized frame UE-ACP (Agreements of Lome and Cotonou) and which is translated for some years by the organization of a meeting (annual) including post-forum, in the highly-rated of the oceanian countries, the " outside powers " always involved in the development of the Pacific.
  If, generally speaking the way of the " multilateral " seems to be the least alienating for the small countries, the island States of the Pacific lead all the same a bilateral active cooperation. Australia, the New Zealand and France give evidence of a constant availability, but a variable intensity. Within the framework of institutions prevailing in New Caledonia since 1999, a power of negotiation and cooperation was conferred by the French State on the government of the country and on the executives of three provinces. Natural affinities among Melanesians led the Kanak leaders being load responsible for the North of the Big Earth and Loyalty Islands to take advantage Vanuatu or Salomon of their financial resources, in social or cultural development. In August, 2000, New Caledonia AND PNG has just signed an agreement of fishing opening to the New Caledonian vessels the PAPUAN ZEE . In parallel, Australian financial and technological interests have just allowed the starting up of the production of black pearls Kiribati and Salomon.
  However, it is with the RPC or Taiwan that bilateral cooperation seems to be the most engaged, because it joins in the maintaining fifty years rivalry setting the representatives of " two China ". Taiwan's public help offered in Nauru, in Tuvalu, in the Marshall Islands or in Salomon is at the moment determining for the life of these small States; recently, the government of Honiara obtained $ 2 million subsidy for its functioning as a matter of urgency, after the crisis opposing nationals of the islands of Guadalcanal and Malaita. In PNG, a recent change of government bent relations among Papuan and Chinese for the benefit of the RPC. In the register of the action of the countries of the Southeast Asia in the Pacific, it is also to note important Malay investments in the forestry development in Fiji, in Salomon and in PNG.
  Generally, the oceanian island countries appeal to multinationals taken up residence mainly in countries suppliers of aid to the developing countries to run their agricultural, mining or forested resources. The interests of States correspond only very rarely to those of the populations, where from ceaseless protest formulated by these last ones in environmental protection or in exercise of right of land taxes. Although it is it, if royalties owed by the big firms developers can be consequent (to be able to exploit the mine of OK Tedi in PNG's center, BHP firm has to grant 357 $ millions in some 30.000" property owners "), on the other hand the amount of the help for the development by living rest very lower than what confers a sovereign power on the territories, within the framework of the action of administrative decentralization: in 1994, the dependent territories obtained by living 1300 (and even $ 3290 / inhabitant. For the only French TOM), against $ 135 / inhabitant for the independent island States. Remainder subordinated to commercial transactions between donor counties and conductors, the HFD turns rarely to those that more need it.
  In different domains, the HFD is nevertheless indispensable: for the education and health, protection of ground and maritime environments, valuation of renewable energies (photo-voltaic or wind), production of drinking water from a brackish water or from a sea water, genetic procedures of improvement or fight against the parasites in agriculture, the equipment of the workshops of craft, the organization of the armaments of coastal and lagoon fishing . But more than to be the object of "transfers" of power developed in small developing country, these domains are approached in a way privileged within the framework of programs developed by the Community of the Pacific, of which very important South Pacific Regional Environment Program realized with the cooperation of the PNUE / UNEP.
  On the whole, during five-year period 1990-1994, financial resources assigned to the oceanian countries by " outside powers " amounted to $ 4120 millions from France, in $ 2851 M from Australia, $ 1040 M from United Kingdom, in $ 859 M from Japan, $ 664 M from the United States and $ 254 M from New Zealand.
  
Between assistance and turbulence, a world in search of stability

Has the edge of 21-th century, the Pacific can not be always considered uniformly as a haven of peace, in spite of efforts displayed this way with the members of the Forum.. One can even say that confusions tend to become intensified in the Occidental part, as on its internal "face" as on its external "hillside". The countries of the Melanesian area and the insular-Indian archipelagoes know difficulties of any orders, in particular big institutional instability. The powers of the circumference of the Pond, in the first of which is to place the United States, Japan and Australia, as the small island States situated in the Big Ocean, very legally they become worried. Nothing in the short term let think that diagnosed difficulties are going to be able to disappear.

  Development increasingly marked with a line of intra-oceanian fracture
 
  The agreements of defense inherent to the pact of association of the states of Micronesia ( EFM), Belau (or Palau) and the Marshall Islands in United States of America, statuses of Commonwealth of Marianne of the North and Territory of the Union of Guam allowed the islands of the Pacific situated in the North of Ecuador to appear as a zone of stability which does not have to be afraid of major questioning: " price to be paid " by the American private or public actors was for a long time negotiated, then updated (of the order of $ 4 billions for 1990's). As for the demographic excess registered in a chronic way in these island circles, it regularly spreads in the continental space of the contracting power.
  Also, the statuses of very wide autonomy (in fact of "co-sovereign power") negotiated by the French Polynesia, then New Caledonia, with France should produce an institutional stability as for 2020. This political stability bases itself on the city toll by France of a high average level of life for Tahitians ($14.900 / inhabitants.) and the New Caledonians ($15300 / inhabitants.) comparable to that of the nationals of Guam ($20.300 / inhabitants.) even the Hawaiian Islands ($27.600 / inhabitants., which represents according to year a position among the 10-th and the 15-th rank, on the 50 States which counts in the Union).
  Certainly economic-cultural disparities exist, what militates in favor of a bigger social equality, as in the American space as in the French space. However, in term of purchasing power, the "eccentric" of these systems can look like "privileged" when one compares it with the standard individual of the small Island States. So that Pacific Islanders placed under the New Zealand custody negotiated, a pact of association with the authorities of Wellington; only the Samoans make exception because their country, which was a prosperous German colony between 1879 and 1918, was deliberately pushed towards the independence, at the beginning of 1960's, by English-speaking circles which did not know or did not want to fruit economic and cultural capital set up by the business people of Hamburg, at instigation of Bismarck.
  Generally speaking, the post-colonial history of the Polynesian areas and Micronesian does not present major tension questioning the balance of the island societies. On the contrary, one can worried about the tensions that are daylight periodically and more and more often in Melanesia. If the independence of Vanuatu was tempestuous due to the former competition of the economic circles affiliated to the spheres of Australian and French influence, one can wonder of the practice of coups d'état in Fiji, oceanian country often quoted in example in the 1970's for an inter-ethnic situation considered "fair". Now, in 1987 and very recently in 2000, " the preeminence of the native people in the canal of the State " is asserted with force, understanding the legitimacy of discriminations against the descendants of the Indian immigrants, in particular by not -renewing since 1997 of more than 3000 agricultural leases (57500 ha of sugar plantation soil are the stake in this debate as for 2024).   The non-realization of the Fijian "nation" since the obtaining of the independence in 1970, the crisis of oceanian traditional power reveals incapacity to think institutional relations in a frame of understandable modernity of the biggest number. Old ethnic-cultural oppositions between two big communities Melanesian and Indian do not explain everything. The bankruptcy of the small mixed-race community which was not able to or did not know how to be necessary as element of regulation of the local life, the absence of project of development of real scale for a country which counts at the moment 800.000 inhabitants, lack of direction of "public good" at many political leaders contribute to this failure.
  Salomon's states, Papua - New Guinea and Vanuatu know they also grave internal crises, generally bringing the intervention of foreign troops of interposition (often Australian or New Zealand). A long time, the attention of the observers was focused on the case of Bougainvillea, relatively vast island situated in the North of the Salomon bow , affiliated due to the facts of colonial conquest to PNG's state. Now, the island welcomed, at the time of the independence ( 1975 ), the biggest copper mine of the world ( Panguna), feeding due to the substantial royalties from the Papuan State (considered locally "a foreigner") and not those of the traditional "property owners". These last ones organized a violent rebellion that lasted two decades, proclaiming from 1976 a Republic of the North Salomon. Bougainvillea Revolutionary Army multiplied sabotages. And even though the island benefits at the moment from a government relatively autonomous with regard to central power, the mine are the object always of contesting and does not manage to be put back in production; agreements signed in 1994 for Honiara go unheeded. In fact, in time, tribal violence propagated in all the country, including and especially in Port Moresby, the capital. And without reaching the violence of the revolt of the usual "owners" of the mining perimeter of Bougainvillea, new conflicts burst on the New-Guinea "continent" about degradation connected to the activity of the mines (in particular in Fly River valley) or as a result of " the neglect " of the payment of royalties to the land leaders for the local tribes.
In Islands Salomon, the authorities of every island try to free themselves from central power and to get for their only profit foreign help when this one puts a lot in a precise place (case of the scientific expedition of search for the remains of the vessel of Pérouse, to Vanikoro). The recent riots that burst to Honiara, the capital, and the insecurity that reigns there since, in spite of the presence of foreign military observers, confirms the decay of the State. It is decision, in 1999 , of Isatabu Freedom Movement, claimed representing people of Guadalcanal, to expel from Honiara and Unilever's plantations more than 20.000 nationals of the island of Malaita which provoked a series of confrontations with Halation Eagle Force, then reversal of the government in 2000. But in fact, since the declaration of independence intervened in 1978, the various islands have respite to claim the possibility of acting in the most total independence, reducing the State to a simple envelope defender face to face outside. In the case of Guadalcanal, there is also requirement of the local authorities to obtain from the government an annuity of 800.000 F to maintains its national services to Honiara, the capital, (created after World War II by recuperation of a large American military base) is considered inalienable. In fact 60.000 inhabitants are alienated and are registered in Salomon since the colonial time (30.000 ha for the benefit of Unilever).
  Whether it is in PNG, in Salomon or in Vanuatu, the traditional universe is so split up that no national consciousness was able to spread within the populations. Custom is advanced so permanently for there fact to cover games of private interests or micro-communities which behave as entities not raising {*finding*} the national public space. The notion of "region with a measure of autonomy" agent by delegation of a plot of land of the national sovereign power does not exist; the principle of sovereign power in the modern sense of the term is unthinkable outside the governmental bureaucratize; on the contrary, the State is conceived with the biggest number only as a federative " Headmen ", an extreme alliance for groups which work essentially on the basis of local solidarity; " homeland, it is in most an island of some hundreds of km2, sometimes a territory of less than 10.000 ha.
  So, appears very sharply a heavy line of cleavage of direction, within the island Pacific:
  - A space of " shared sovereign power ", leaning mainly on Micronesia and Polynesia, where native societies lean on an outside power (the United States, New Zealand or France) to lead a politics of compromise associating the development of native cultures basing collective identities (where from the importance of the periodic holding of the festivals of the arts of the Pacific) and a will decided to participate in the modernity of the post-industrial societies by the valuation of a qualitative tourism and some navy productions being indeed able to pass by on the international markets: pearls, shrimps, fresh tuna for the supply by air mail of the Japanese market of the sashimi. So, the black pearl developed on a great scale in present French Polynesia - the figure of business is around 1,4 billions F, in the end of 1990's; This figure results at the same moment from sales granted on the Japanese business tycoons, on the Chinese brokers of outer-sea and on the European or North American jewelers, feeding additionally in Tahiti a lucrative craft activity; only at present perceptible danger is not as the phenomenon of competition of Cook Island, Kiribati and Islands Salomon as the rigorous lack professional of certain actors Tahitians who, by speculative madness, tend too much to sell prizes of inferior quality, leading in 2000 an immediate penalty of the Japanese, the Europeans and the Americans, namely a general slump of prizes brought under the hammer in October on the place of Papeete.
  - A space of " deconstruction " of the State on the scale of the "independent" Melanesia, where memberships local supporters always take the step on national interests: in the Parliament of PNG, Salomon or Vanuatu, it is translated by ceaseless reorganizations of governmental coalitions incapable to define an action of means - length term in political, economic and social subjects. The elected representatives, it is necessary to admit, are generally indexed to traditional communities accepting advantage, but not the obligations of the state functioning. For it, they are often of complicity with "fellow countrymen" leaders of small bureaucratic nomenclature , which got used to, since about twenty years, seizing "public good" from their profit and from their local community of origin. The companionship becomes established based on the membership of the same island or the same valley of the big earth.
  If corruption is widely spread throughout the world, the breach of trust of the leaders for small badly developed countries has dramatic consequences for the populations, because they are widely deprived and need more than quite other incomes which their State can exports. It follows , in the best of cases, a fold on the traditional villages; but soils very badly support obviously the overexploitation that one imposes on them. In the worst of cases, it is for the development of the urban guerrilla that it is necessary to expect, simply to survive, when one does not know how to work any more the land. The process of decline, which one noticed in different sectors of Africa, since the 1970's, seems to have reached the Occidental Pacific, in 2000.
  Has the interface of two described sub-regional spaces, New Caledonia proposes a plan which for two decades to come in fact an example of the regime of the shared " sovereign power ". At the end of this period, one can however see it falling over to the "syndrome" which characterizes at present the four States of the Melanesia. The RPCR and the FLNKS, signers of the agreements of Noumea, which represent interests of the dominant cultural communities (Kanak and european colonials) and to very typified values, are perfectly conscious of it. Efforts were made, on both sides , to stabilize political life in the duration. However, the objectives of the native community, the multi-secular implanting, and those of the community of European origin, organized during colonial period, can with difficulty overlap. Among them are minorities of Polynesian previous history (Wallisian, Futunian and Tahitian) or Asiatic (Vietnamese and Indonesian) which, until now, adhere to the "inter-ethnic" project wanted with the RPCR and the European New Caledonians of European ancestry.
  As the forms of interbreeding are more and more frequent and varied in Noumea, one can think that eventually one will uncork in the constitution of a people half-blood, getting from every essential community the values of sociability and ethics with general value: the unity of the country would be then found. The emergence of a " New Caledonian people " is all the more plausible as the Europeans settled after 1988 can not feed any more the society issuing from the colonization and to trim in the local "citizenship". However, at the same time the New Caledonian citizens of previous history of the non-indigenous native person varied can not integrate the native community of the Melanesians. By being officially called " Kanak people ", this last one sees itself recognized as a cultural preeminence in the country, compensated in the political plan until now with the majority position of the non-indigenous native groups federated with the RPCR. From then on, can it there have realization of a cultural interbreeding and a political unity for New Caledonia?
  Question at the moment can not find of definitive answer, unless forecast that the current demographic dynamism of Melanesians is going to allow, around 2020, to triumph " Kanak independence " by disposal of a majority of votes. Then, it is likely that an ethnic redeployment occurs: as the community of Caledonian Europeans has big affinities with the white community of Australia, it risks to migrate there massively. Brisbane's region which already welcomes, " in second home ", 5.000 to 6.000 nationals of New Caledonia, can easily welcome it definitively ten times more, especially since these people, often fortunate, would participate easily in the development of the coast of Queensland.
  For lack of independence Kanak obtained by referendum, dichotomy registered in the New Caledonian space accentuated: a zone of 5.000 km2, populated at least with 200.000 inhabitants. Centered on Noumea (the South and partially the West Coast ), developed and urbanized " in the Australian "; a zone of 14.000 km2, populated in most than 30.000 inhabitants. Regrouping the northerly part of the West Coast, the East Coast, and the central Chain and the peripheral islands, the conservatoire of oceanian rusticity , sponsored by Noumea assures leisure activities and relaxation to its residents.
If an ironworks has to be born in the plain of one (its possible starting up must be announced to the first quarter of autumn 2001), it is foreseen that it works with a frame based to Brisbane. Very automated, it will not allow locally the creation of many jobs, especially since the objective of the young people of New Caledonian Europeans or Kanak is more to fit into the public service that to work in the factory. This production unit is essentially wanted by power representing Kanak world as source of incomes (under shape of parts of profit, royalties and taxes) to finance the improvement of the conditions of life of people taking advantage badly of the modernity within the perimeters of usual lands.

  The inherence trouble in the insular-Indian ocean environment

  If the Oceanians worry primarily about the future of the island Pacific of which they are native, they can not infinitely ignore the problems of oriental Asia. Tensions among RPC and Taiwan, suspicions of two Koreas, will of Japan to get back the Kuril Islands and the claims of China to control the sea of China in the South, can their appear as distant problems. On the other hand, they can not ignore any more the tensions of the world insular-Indian ocean and, quite particularly, the different forms of confrontation between central power and local communities, on bottom of opposition between Christians and Moslem.
  So, in the Philippines, country mainly Christian, the government of Manila is confronted of long date with a Moslem finding rebellion place in the island of Mindanao. As for the Christian community of Celebes (become Sulawesi) and Molluccas, vestiges of the Portuguese then Dutch establishment of the last centuries ( 16-th century and 20-th century), they undergo, since the declaration of independence of Indonesia ( 1945 ), political pressures, even physical ill-treatment about which nobody speaks, because the Indonesian sovereignty on these islands can not be disputed; so from the beginning 1950's, more than 20.000 Molluccas left to settle down in Netherlands.
  Legitimacy in the Indonesian State could take advantage in Sulawesi and in Moluccas can not be advanced to justify invasion by the Indonesian army of the Dutch colonial territories of New Occidental Guinea and Portuguese oriental Timor. After the recognition by Netherlands of the independence of Indonesia ( 1949 ), Papuan the populations living in the Occidental part of New Guinea had to benefit from a preparation of the administration of their own public affairs, before having to choose their definitive status, including the exercise of the full sovereignty. But in full Cold war, the Dutch government, under the double pressure of American and Indonesian authorities, accepted the principle of the transfer of sovereignty of the New-Guinea territory in the Indonesian State, in the excuse that this territory had been a time connected with the Amboine's colonial district (or Ambon). Since 1962, Melanesian of New Occidental Guinea, called Irian Jaya by the Indonesians, so has to support a new shape colonization. Under-growths develop on the border of PNG, which serves obviously of sanctuary.
The most news coverage exaction introduced by Indonesian power, against Christian populations, finds place on the former Portuguese territory of oriental Timor, invaded by the Javanese army in 1975, with the assent of Portugal, the United States, then Australia, these two very worried being last ones, at the time, of the strong push of the communism in Southeast Asia, while the first quoted terminated its colonial action. Only, in the 24 years that followed, about 35 % of the local population were massacred with complete impunity.
  A long time the Australians did not find there anything to criticize, being associated to the Indonesians for the exploitation of offshore petroleum in the wide of Timor's coasts. It was necessary that Indonesia sinks into the crisis in 1997, may that the president Suharto resigns (in May, 1998), that a referendum of self-determination is scheduled by the UNO in August, 1999 and that assurance is then given to the Australians, by the freedom fighters of Timor, that in case of arrival to power they would not modify the contracts for oil exploitation, to convince the government of Canberra to change radically strategy. Once Timor's independence acquired (78 % of the electorate pronounced in its favor), Australia obtained United Nations a role of leader in the return in the peace, maintains the order and humanitarian assistance in favor of Timorous, matched by the annual payment until 2004 of a help with the reconstruction of the order of 2,7 billions F a year.
  The presence of long date of American and Australian military missions in Singapore has to remind us that English-speaking powers having a facade on Pacific Ocean have the will to be present in Southeast Asia, as for their security as for the development of their business. Whereas the United States established a global strategy face to face of Asia, Australia concentrates its interest on the Indo-Chinese peninsula (in particular on the Malaysia) and the archipelagoes insular-Indian ocean, that is on the " close suburb ", in continuance of the area of Melanesia which was always in its sphere of influence. For the USA, the center of major interest is control at distance of the military Chinese power, power in growth while being in crisis, so particularly unpredictable and dangerous.

*

Hostility declared by Malay authorities in Australia, rupture intervened among Indonesian and Australian leader, political instability in the Philippines conjugates so with difficulties registered in Melanesia to give an image little favorable to the Occidental part of the Pond of the Pacific. It against oriental part can congratulate itself on the "nearness" of the Americans and try to make lucrative business with the Japanese. This duality noticed in 2000 will ask to be refined, but it is not very probable that for ten years to come it modifies radically.
As far as the United States have to face a series of endemic conflicts on the line of flexure Eurasian (crises of the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Central Asia, some Cashmere) and in the neighborhood of China, they are going to tend to continue "to subcontract" with Australia the management of Melanesian crises and to coordinate with their allies of the OTASE to help the two insular-Indian ocean States-archipelagos geopolitical weight of which is too heavy for a single power, was it the first power of the world.
  The Pacific participates widely now in the maids and bad luck of the contemporary world. The shown "pacifism" does not put it shielded from turbulence. His leaders have to be persuaded of it. Maybe the same they should develop their ideology in the close future, because they will not infinitely be able to want to benefit of the best of the modernity and to stigmatize this one and " people outside " which conveys it. They participate in the modernity; they have so to administer the contradictions.
  The Pacific knew a major turnover at the time of the progress of Second World War, then a deep "revolution" with the fast urbanization of the populations. Island mentalities have not yet "digested" the changes which resulted from it, but the quality of life which is connected with it keeps a price: fast adaptation to ways of life and thoughts integrating better know-how and experience of people who "rubbed themselves" in the outside world. The Pacific is a particularly fragile universe; it has to so more quickly than of the other one, strengthen.
  Primarily, it means, to fit out the conditions of a big mobility of the populations, by a successful training and by an better-mastered urbanization , but still increased. It means also integration by the population of the notion of "public good", without which a regime which wants to be democratic can indeed work. It means finally overtaking of the feeling, however justifiable, of the political preeminence of the descendants of people of old implanting with regard to those diverting colonial establishing.
Every time when an ethnic-cultural pluralism is enough obvious, an effort of stake in common of values of sociability must be begun so that durably a people elaborates on the scale of every State or territory: to repress today communities immigrated in the anonymity and citizen's status of second zone is as well insupportable as negation there is some more a personality of the native peoples. An effort of inter-cultural understanding should be suggested in a way that the Pacific of 21-th century, so keen on quality of life, can be quoted in example in a world which needs permanently to exceed its local contradictions and to believe in the aptness of some values with universal vocation.