] So far, so close: the joint Court of the New Hebrides. The sentences handed down under the presidency of Manuel Bosch Barret (1936-1939)

Abstract

The domination of the archipelagos and islands of the South Pacific was one more part of the intricate game of interests of the European monarchies throughout the Modern Age. At the end of this period, above all, France and Great Britain, which in the nineteenth century would be joined by Germany and the United States, would be the protagonists of a series of political and economic disputes where each sought its zone of influence and pre-eminence over the rest of the states. Meanwhile, the role of Spain, so extraordinary in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, declined in the eighteenth century and became practically irrelevant in the nineteenth. The archipelago of Australia del Espíritu Santo, now the Republic of Vanuatu, was discovered for the Spanish Monarchy, almost by chance, by Pedro Fernández de Quirós at the beginning of the seventeenth century. After almost two centuries of abandonment by Spain and disinterest on the part of the rest of the European states, since the end of the eighteenth century, for geostrategic and economic reasons, to which religious reasons were added, Great Britain and France show a growing concern to colonize this and other archipelagos and islands of the South Pacific, which will lead them to compete for control of this immense maritime area. Australia del Espíritu Santo, so designated by Fernández de Quirós, was called, from the end of the eighteenth century, Great Cyclades and, shortly afterwards and until 1980, New Hebrides.

The consequence of the continuous discord between France and Great Britain was the promulgation, at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, of a series of agreements and compromises, imposed on the natives, in which the organization of the archipelago was divided, always and only keeping in mind the selfish colonial interests of the Westerners. An essential element of this political, administrative, judicial and police organization that prevails in the New Hebrides is the Mixed Court/Joint Court which, for historical reasons, was presided over from its constitution until 1939 by a President appointed by the King of Spain. The judgments of this Mixed Court issued under the presidency of Manuel Bosch Barrett (1936-1939) will be the object of analysis in this work.