Ernest Saint-Paul

Un documento inedito per la memoria e l’immaginario delle vicende neocaledoni

Abstract

This paper is the first presentation of an unpublished manuscript found at the Archives Térritoriales de Nouméa, New Caledonia. It is a 244-page autobiography, in which the author, Ernest Saint-Paul, tells of his moving and sometimes picaresque existence. The anthropological and historical interest in this text is undeniable because the case wanted the author to be the protagonist of several historical events: the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the repression of the Paris Commune, the deportation to New Caledonia and the repression of the great kanak rebellion of 1878. The contextualization work of the text is still underway, but the checks already carried out at archival sources seem to confirm the documentary value of this manuscript in which, in an effort to redeem itself in the eyes of the law and French society, the author gives us an involuntary ethnographic text about the kanak uprising of 1878 and the ordinary life in New Caledonia of the late nineteenth century.