‘He Wished We Did Not Look So Thoroughly English’: Competition and Co-Imperialism on a French Polynesian Phosphate Island

Abstract

The Compagnie française des Phosphates de l’Océanie mined phosphate rock on Makatea, a raised coral atoll in the Établissements français de l’Océanie (now French Polynesia) from 1908 to 1966. Despite its name, the company received critical early support from the more experienced Englishman John T. Arundel and his Pacific Phosphate Company. Having formed an informal entente cordiale to overcome rival challengers and local resistance from Marau Ta‘aroa in 1907–8, the French company then moved to sideline British interests in pursuit of an exclusive mining concession of their own. Through a close examination of the imperial posturing and commercial powerplays endemic within early 20th-century Pape‘ete, this article interrogates how British and French imperial and commercial rivalry could lead to either co-operation or acrimony. Crucially, in this case it suggests that these seemingly opposing forces were in fact constitutive and that it was the waxing and waning of this co-imperial relationship that not only gave considerable shape to the phosphate industry but also provided fundamental momentum to the exploitation of Makatea’s phosphate lands.