New Caledonia Emigration and Immigration

Online Records

 * 1878-1960 UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960, at Ancestry.com, index and images. ($)
 * 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at Findmypast - index & images ($); includes those with Destination of New Caledonia
 * 1892-1924 New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924 Search results for New Caledonia
 * 1946-1971 Free Access: Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971 Ancestry, free. Index and images. Passenger lists of immigrants leaving Germany and other European ports and airports between 1946-1971. The majority of the immigrants listed in this collection are displaced persons - Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and Nazi forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern European countries and some non-European countries.

French Overseas Subjects

 * 1823-1908 French Overseas New Caledonia Civil Registration and Parish Registers, 1823-1908, index and images.
 * 1894-1907 French Overseas Wallis and Futuna Civil Registration and Parish Registers, 1894 to 1907, index and images. The Wallis and Futuna Islands, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, under French protectorate from 1842 to 1961 were attached to New Caledonia in 1910.

British Overseas Subjects

 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Births and Baptisms, New Caledonia, index & images ($)
 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Banns and Marriages New Caledonia,, index & images ($)
 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Deaths and Burials at Findmypast - index & images ($)

Finding the Town of Origin in New Caledonia
If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in New Caledonia, see New Caledonia Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

New Caledonia Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Immigration into New Caledonia

 * On 24 September 1853, France took formal possession of New Caledonia. A few dozen free settlers settled on the west coast in the following years.
 * New Caledonia became a penal colony in 1864, and from the 1860s until the end of the transportations in 1897, France sent about 22,000 criminals and political prisoners to New Caledonia. Once the prisoners had completed their sentences, they were given land to settle.
 * 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 1 May 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.
 * 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.
 * In 1864, nickel was discovered on the banks of the Diahot River; with the establishment of the Société Le Nickel in 1876, mining began in earnest. To work the mines the French imported laborers from neighboring islands and from the New Hebrides, and later from Japan, the Dutch East Indies, and French Indochina. The French government also attempted to encourage European immigration, without much success.
 * In 1942, with the assistance of Australia, New Caledonia became an important Allied base, and the main South Pacific Fleet base of the United States Navy in the South Pacific moved to Nouméa in 1942–1943. American troops stationed on New Caledonia numbered as many as 50,000: matching the entire local population at the time.
 * According to the 2014 census, of the 73,199 Europeans in New Caledonia 30,484 were native-born, 36,975 were born in Metropolitan France, 488 were born in French Polynesia, 86 were born in Wallis and Futuna, and 5,166 were born abroad.
 * The Europeans are divided into several groups: the Caldoches are usually defined as those born in New Caledonia who have ancestral ties that span back to the early French settlers. They often settled in the rural areas of the western coast of Grande Terre, where many continue to run large cattle properties.
 * Distinct from the Caldoches are those who were born in New Caledonia from families that had settled more recently, and are called simply Caledonians.
 * The Metropolitan French-born migrants who come to New Caledonia are called Métros or Zoreilles, indicating their origins in metropolitan France.
 * There is also a community of about 2,000 pieds noirs, descended from European settlers in France's former North African colonies.
 * A 2015 documentary by Al Jazeera English asserted that up to 10% of New Caledonia's population is descended from around 2,000 Arab-Berber people deported from French Algeria in the late 19th century to prisons on the island in reprisal for the Mokrani Revolt in 1871. After serving their sentences, they were released and given land to own and cultivate as part of colonization efforts on the island.
 * As the overwhelming majority of the Algerians imprisoned on New Caledonia were men, the community was continued through intermarriage with women of other ethnic groups, mainly French women from nearby women's prisons. The largest population of Algerian-Caledonians lives in the commune of Bourail (particularly in the Nessadiou district, where there is an Islamic cultural centre and cemetery), with smaller communities in Nouméa, Koné, Pouembout, and Yaté.

Emigration From New Caledonia
KNOMAD Statistics: Emigrants: 6,400. Top destination countries: French Polynesia, Australia, the United States, Vanuatu, Argentina, Canada, Ukraine, Colombia, the Netherlands, Norway.
 * New Caledonia Kanaks are a Melanesian people native to the overseas French territory brought to Australia and New Zealand, and across Polynesia (The French territory of Tahiti) as agricultural workers in newly founded plantations during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
 * Most Kanak laborers in Australia were deported back to New Caledonia in the 1910s due to racial fears of Kanaks live among the country's white European-descent majority. Today, an estimated 30,000 Australian descendants of Kanaks live in the state of Queensland, where the main concentration of Australian plantation agriculture took place.