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Nouméa Catholic CathedralNouméa - New Caledonia - Melanesia - Pacific Ocean
Nouméa is the capital city of the French territory of New Caledonia. It is situated on a peninsula in the south of New Caledonia's main island, Grande Terre, and is home to the majority of the island's European, Polynesian (Wallisians, Futunians, Tahitians), Indonesian, and Vietnamese population, as well as many Melanesian Ni-Vanuatu and Kanaks that work in one of the South Pacific's most industrialised cities. The city lies on a protected deepwater harbour which serves as the chief port for New Caledonia. The population of the city (commune) at the Aug./Sept. 2004 census was 91,386 inhabitants (up from 76,293 inhabitants at the 1996 census). Including the suburbs of Nouméa, the population of the Greater Nouméa metropolitan area (French: agglomération du Grand Nouméa) at the 2004 census was 146,245 inhabitants (up from 118,823 inhabitants in 1996, meaning a booming 2.5% population increase per year). 63.4% of the population of New Caledonia live in Greater Nouméa, which covers the communes of Nouméa, Le Mont-Dore, Dumbéa and Païta.
History The area in which the city is found was not an important one for Kanaks prior to European settlement; the first European to set up a settlement nearby was a British trader, James Paddon, in 1851. The French, anxious to assert control of the island, established a settlement there three years later in 1854, originally named Port-de-France, (moving from the settlement of Balade in the north of the island). The area served first as a penal colony, later as a centre for the exploitation of the nickel and gold that was mined nearby. It served as the headquarters of the United States military in the Pacific during World War II. The U.S. military headquarters - a pentagonal complex - was, after the war, taken over as the base for a new regional intergovernmental development organisation: the South Pacific Commission. The Secretariat of the Pacific Community, as it was later known, has become a "mini-United Nations of the South Pacific" in the words of the former President of Vanuatu, Ati George Sokomanu, with the additional distinction of allowing island territories equal status and voting rights with independent countries in its governing council.
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This information was correct in July 2008. E. & O.E.
2008
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