Crossing Empires, Colonies and Cultures: Exchange, Connections and Continuing Creolisation among Migrants from Reunion via New Caledonia to New South Wales

This article explores the stories of a small number of Reunionese and Indian families who settled in New South Wales, having previously migrated from Reunion to New Caledonia. Their migration to Australia was effected through networks established by French traders and Marist missionaries. They settled in Sydney and on the Clarence River. For these families, the dynamics of intercultural exchange were, and are still, complex, linked to power inequalities and differing perceptions of race and nationality across empires, and shaped by trauma, rupture, deculturation, fragmentation, prejudice and the process of creolisation. The author draws extensively on New Caledonian archival records and other historical documentation, as well as on interviews with descendants of two of these families.