The Administering of the Bodies and Sexuality of Javanese Women Migrants in Early Twentieth Century New Caledonia

Since their arrival on the island in 1896, the Javanese diaspora in New Caledonia has been regarded as the group that has been most accommodating to the French Pacific ruler. Politically, they have never coordinated any resistance campaign. Socially, they have been able to coexist peacefully with different ethnic groups, including the Europeans, the Kanaks (Melanesians), and the Wallis (Polynesians). From the economic standpoint, they are still praised for their hard work as laborers in the plantations and mines in the past. While Europeans and other ethnic
groups appreciate their presence on this island, historically the Javanese diaspora was a vulnerable community whose physical bodies and sexuality were administratively regulated by the French colonial ruler. This study intends to investigate how the female Javanese koeli kontrak (contract laborers) were controlled in terms of their bodies and sexuality in past French colonial projects in New Caledonia. The novel La Bayou: de Djakarta à Nouméa by Liliane Saintomer and the personal and familial historical accounts of a New Caledonian Javanese descendant, Catherine Adi, served as the sources for the study’s data. Adi narrates the stories of her ancestors, on both her mother’s and father’s sides, who arrived on this island as contract laborers. This study used content analysis as a method to identify the connections between the writers’ micro narratives and the social and political circumstances that existed in New Caledonia during the time of the colonial period at the beginning of the twentieth century.