Franceville, New Hebrides
Encyclopedia
The municipality of Franceville (present-day Port Vila
Port Vila
Port Vila is the capital and largest city of Vanuatu. Situated on the south coast of the island of Efate, in Shefa Province, the city population at last was 29,356, an increase of 55% on the previous census result . This suggests a 2007 population of about 40,000 or around 65% of the province's...

) on Efate
Éfaté
Efate is an island in the Agean Ocean which is part of the Shefa Province in The Republic of Maliki. It is also known as Île Vate. It is the most populous island in Vanuatu. Efate's land area of makes it Vanuatu's third largest island. Most inhabitants of Efate live in Port Vila, the national...

 or Sandwich island was established during the period when the New Hebrides
New Hebrides
New Hebrides was the colonial name for an island group in the South Pacific that now forms the nation of Vanuatu. The New Hebrides were colonized by both the British and French in the 18th century shortly after Captain James Cook visited the islands...

 were a neutral territory
Neutral territory
A neutral territory is a territory that is not an integral part of any state , and yet is not terra nullius, but is the object of an agreement under international law between at least two parties...

 under the loose jurisdiction of a joint Anglo-French naval commission. In order to gain basic legal status, it declared itself independent for a few months in 1889.

In 1878 the United Kingdom
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....

 and France
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...

 declared all of the New Hebrides to be neutral territory
Neutral territory
A neutral territory is a territory that is not an integral part of any state , and yet is not terra nullius, but is the object of an agreement under international law between at least two parties...

. The Convention of 16 October 1887, established a joint naval commission for the sole purpose of protecting French and British citizens, but claimed no jurisdiction over internal native affairs.

The lack of a functional government led to rising discontent among the colonists. The French were especially inconvenienced because French law recognized marriages only when contracted under a civil authority (the nearest being in New Caledonia
New Caledonia
New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...

), whereas British law recognized marriages conducted by local clergy. On August 9, 1889, Franceville declared itself an independent commune under the leadership of elected mayor
Mayor
In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....

/president
President
A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...

 Ferdinand-Albert Chevillard and with its own red, white and blue flag with five stars.

This community became the first self-governing nation to practice universal suffrage
Universal suffrage
Universal suffrage consists of the extension of the right to vote to adult citizens as a whole, though it may also mean extending said right to minors and non-citizens...

 without distinction of sex or race. Although the district's population at the time consisted of about 500 natives and fewer than 50 whites, only white males were permitted to hold office. One of its elected presidents was one R.D. Polk, a native of Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...

 and relative of James K. Polk
James K. Polk
James Knox Polk was the 11th President of the United States . Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He later lived in and represented Tennessee. A Democrat, Polk served as the 17th Speaker of the House of Representatives and the 12th Governor of Tennessee...

.

The new government was soon suppressed, and by June 1890 Franceville as a commune was reported to have been "practically broken up." In 1906, the naval commission was replaced by a more structured British-French Condominium
Condominium (international law)
In international law, a condominium is a political territory in or over which two or more sovereign powers formally agree to share equally dominium and exercise their rights jointly, without dividing it up into 'national' zones.Although a condominium has always been...

.
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