France annexed this Melanesian island chain in the Southwestern Pacific Ocean in 1853 and turned it into a penal colony starting in 1864. French convicts were shipped to New Caledonia including thousands of communards after the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871, among them Louise Michel who later on worked with the indigenous Kanak people to fight for liberation from French colonial rule even after the communards were granted general amnesty in 1879.