Louise Michel in New Caledonia
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In honor of Louise Michel’s birthday and the ongoing anti-colonial resistance in New Caledonia, we offer a narrative recounting her time in exile there and her support for the anti-colonial uprising that took place during her stay.
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This story illustrates how regimes seek to force their own subjects into service in colonial projects.
We note that—like Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, and many other 19th-century anarchists—Louise Michel only came to formally identify as an anarchist after spending time with Indigenous people.
While many of her colleagues nonetheless retained Eurocentric notions about “progress” and “civilization,” Louise Michel wholeheartedly sided with Indigenous resistance to French colonialism.
Consequently, she is remembered more warmly today than most French settlers in New Caledonia.
