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The Cotton War


La guerre du coton 1861-1865

A hundred years before Tahiti was swept into the fast-paced modern era, it was in 1862 that Papara again drew attention due to its vast plain, which once belonged to the Ma’ono clan (ati).



A Scot, William Stewart, admiring this place dotted with small plots of land, drew up a plan: to create a vast cotton plantation, at a time when the Civil War was raging in the United States, pitting the industrialized North against the agricultural wealth of the Confederate South, whose economy was based on slavery.


Auguste Soares, the brother of his wife, was a Portuguese financier: he would provide the funds.

Cotton Pickers in the Field (ref NYPL b12647398-69474) 1898

Thus was born the Polynesia Plantation Company, even though it eventually went by the name of Tahiti Cotton and Coffee Plantation Company.


Over the next two years, Stewart acquired all the land plots of the plain, eventually amassing a vast expanse of land, from the lagoon teeming with marine species to the giant trees surrounding the mountain cliffs, from PK 36 to PK 43, bordered by the Taharu’u and Vaitotoa rivers: in total, 3,950 hectares, of which about 1,450 were cultivable for cotton and coffee.


Sources: The chronological data in this article are mostly from the website www.tahitiheritage.pf

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