| Sumario: | Evocations and invocations of the possibility of revolt or violence on the part of Kanak were an ever present feature of European settler discourse in 19th and early 20th century New Caledonia. Within this discourse, there was a constant tension between the possibility of (or potential for) violence invoked by settlers, and the attempts of colonial administrators to deny this possibility. For the local administration, denial of the possibility of a mass Kanak revolt was part of an attempt to move towards a more indirect form of control over the dangerous individual. Settler evocations or invocations of the possibility of revolt can be seen, depending on the context, as direct threats to Kanak, as appeals for administrative intervention (repression) or as rhetorical attacks on the local administration.
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