2 September 1940 - Tahiti - Free France

2 September 1940
The rallying of the French Establishments of Oceania to General de Gaulle.

While the New Hebrides were the first, on 18 July 1940, to join Free France, Tahiti did so on 2 September. The time of ruptures was beginning. Little by little, parcel by parcel, the colonial Empire was making its choices. This rallying of the French Establishments of Oceania to Free France might have seemed a thin subject, dependent on poorly catalogued sources, all the more so as the period covered spans only 13 months separating September 1940 from October 1941.

And yet, it was on the contrary a dense period. 13 months of vicissitudes in the exercise and control of local power, from the rallying of Tahiti to General de Gaulle following a massive popular approval by referendum, to the arrival of a military governor firmly installed by Admiral Thierry d'Argenlieu, after various episodes in which the character of the key figures does not always appear to have been equal to the situation and the scale of the stakes involved.

Henri Weill, who does not conceal the strength of the emotional bond he holds with the South Pacific, has succeeded, through this study, in reconciling passion and distance, breaking down stereotypes the better to interrogate them, and associating Polynesia with the construction of knowledge through an examination of the choices made within the French colonial empire in the aftermath of the defeat and the armistice of 1940.