France ends its use of New Caledonia…

France ends its use of New Caledonia as a penal colony in 1897.

New Caledonia had become a penal colony in 1864, and from the 1860s until the end of the transportations in 1897, France sent about twenty-two thousand criminals and political prisoners to New Caledonia.

The Bulletin de la Société générale des prisons for 1888 indicates that 10,428 convicts, including 2,329 freed ones, were on the island as of May 1, 1888, by far the largest number of convicts detained in French overseas penitentiaries.

The convicts included many Communards, arrested after the failed Paris Commune of 1871, including Henri de Rochefort and Louise Michel.

Between 1873 and 1876, 4,200 political prisoners were "relegated" to New Caledonia.

Only 40 of them settled in the colony; the rest returned to France after being granted amnesty in 1879 and 1880.