During 1917-1918, war ravaged the hill country north of New Caledonia's main island, the Grande terre. Occurring sixty-four years after France's 1853 annexation of New Caledonia and in the midst of the Great War of 1914-1918, the conflict was known by the mid-twentieth century as "the last of the kanak revolts." It represented to many--until the "events" of the 1980s--the final pacification of Kanak (the indigenous people of New Caledonia).

Specters of Violence in a Colonial Context is the first comprehensive history of the 1917-1918 war, which involved the French army, European...