Editing Communards (section)

== Deportation ==
After Bloody Week, the government asked for an inquest into the causes of the uprising. The inquest concluded that the main cause of the insurrection was a [[atheism|lack of belief in God]], and that this problem had to be corrected immediately.{{sfn|Bullard|2000|p=86}} It was decided that a moral revival was needed, and a key part of this was deporting 4,500 Communards to [[New Caledonia]], in [[Melanesia]]. There was a two-part goal in this, as the government also hoped that the Communards would "civilize" the native [[Kanak people]] on the island. The government hoped that being exposed to the order of nature would return the Communards to the side of "good."{{sfn|Bullard|2000|p=93}}

New Caledonia had become a French colony in 1853, but just ten years later it still only had 350 European colonists. After 1863, New Caledonia became the principal destination of convicts transported from France after [[French Guiana]] was deemed too unhealthy for people of European descent. Thereafter, convicts from France made up the largest number of arriving residents. During the busiest time of [[deportation]], there were estimated to be about 50,000 total people on the island. This included 30,000 Kanak, 2,750 civilian colonists, 3,030 military personnel, 4,000 ''déportés'' ([[political criminal]]s, including the Communards), 6,000 {{lang|fr|transportés}} ([[common-law]] criminal convicts), and 1,280 criminal convicts who had served their sentences but were still living on the island.{{sfn|Bullard|2000|p=122—124}} There were four main penitentiary sites on the island, one of which, [[Isle of Pines, New Caledonia|Isle of Pines]] (1870–1880), was for the Communards deportees exclusively.{{sfn|Toth|2006|p=18}}