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The city of La Rochelle has developed through trade with the rest of the world since the 13th century. First Europe, then Africa and the Americas were privileged. The opening towards Oceania was never considered. However, the Natural History Museum of this city now has an ethnographic collection of 1675 items. Its constitution is to the credit of the curator Étienne Loppé (1883-1954). Within this collection, the Polynesian corpus is particularly noteworthy. Both its composition and the process of heritage presentation go far beyond local museum history and illustrate the relations between France and Oceania in the 18th and 19th centuries. It also questions the orientations of the acquisition policy at the beginning of the 21st century.