New Caledonian Women in the Free French: Challenging Gender and Racial Absences in Archival Records and Personal Narratives

Charles de Gaulle’s Free French forces were dominated by men recruited from across the French Empire. However, women from every imperial territory also played an important role. This article focuses on women from New Caledonia, in the French Pacific, who joined the Free French women’s auxiliary forces in Autumn 1940. It draws upon military archives, contemporary newspaper coverage, and Raymonde Jore’s autobiography to investigate how these women skillfully navigated their identities and the stories of their service, depending on the sociopolitical environment. It also demonstrates how the intersections of gender and race influenced official attitudes toward these female combatants, as male metropolitan French officers and their administration were forced to grapple with changing visions of womanhood and empire in periods of war and decolonization.