The first Australian governor, Sir Hubert Murray, introduced measures of native development but preserved the British pattern of colonial government, as did New Zealand in the Cook Islands. Offered as a free service to readers, PIR provides an edited digest of news, commentary and analysis from across the Pacific Islands region, Monday - Friday. Polynesians reached such remote Pacific islands as the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, and Easter Island—Earth’s last habitable areas for... By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. One region of islands in a common sea Map of colonial history While the winds of change swept through European colonies in Asia and Africa after the Second World War, decolonisation came later in the Pacific region. These colonial governments were adapted to local circumstances.

For example, Pohnpei, an island state of the Federated States of Micronesia, was first “discovered” in 1526 when the Spaniards named it the “New Phillippines”. Micronesia includes the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau (Belau), the U. S. Territory of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. Southeast New Guinea was declared a protectorate in 1884 and annexed four years later; the Cooks became a protectorate in 1888 and were annexed in 1901. In 1853 the presence of French missionaries in New Caledonia led to French annexation, possibly for fear of British action and certainly to establish a penal colony (to which convicts were transported until 1897). Supported by By 1845, all of the Tongan islands had been united by ancestors of the current dynasty. Tonga was settled about 500 BC. The governor was analogous to the prefect of a French département, assisted by an administrative council and from time to time by a general council drawn from French citizens. While it’s true that colonialism often brought some of the trappings of "development" such as infrastructure, trade, commerce and industry, the negative impacts more than outweighed any supposed benefits. plantations sometimes took islanders under doubtful or brutal conditions. Gov. The country has had a compact of free association with the US since 1982 (Ashby, 1993). In Western Samoa (now Samoa), in the first decade of the 20th century, the governor Wilhelm Solf attempted to limit Chinese immigration for the plantations and tried to enlist Samoan interest for the government, but the commercial interests exerted influence in Germany itself and forced the governor to revise his policies. Historically, Micronesians descended from seafarers who populated the island atolls between 2000 BC and 500 BC.

A spate of missionary societies are founded in London in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The first confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Pacific Islands occurred in French Polynesia, Guam, Hawaii and New Caledonia, all of them American and French colonial dependencies (along with Papua New Guinea, a nation of 8 million people, these territories also had the highest rates of HIV infection during the AIDS pandemic in the late 20th Century). But that is not what colonialism is all about and that is not what transpired in any part of the colonial world including Fiji. And even as we move to the end of the twentieth century, the … The Dutch explorers visited in 1643 after the islands were sighted in 1616. In the same year, two more were deported from Hawaii. Even in Melanesia, where chieftainship was not highly developed, the British attempted to appoint chiefs who were men of influence. Some hold that Fiji Indians were crucial to Fiji’s economic development and that Fijians should be thankful for this supposed salvation. One year after eastern Samoa was given to the United States under the convention of 1899, Pres. Spain later “claimed sovereignty” over most of Micronesia. William McKinley placed it under the authority of the Department of the Navy; the commanding officer of the station also became governor and administered the islands with the help of his technical officers and a Samoan fono, or legislature. But in both Hawaii and Tahiti, the old system of rank had broken down under the impact of missionaries, traders, and settlers, so it could not be used for administrative purposes but had to be replaced by appointed local officials. A sad legacy of World War II is the nuclear weapons testing that occurred in the Marshall Islands starting in 1946. The British government appointed consuls to some islands, but their powers to maintain order were limited and, except for the visits of warships, unenforceable. The New Zealand government administered Western Samoa under the auspices of the League of Nations and then as a UN trusteeship until independence in 1962. Guam's history of colonialism is the longest among the Pacific islands and Chamorros are considered one of the oldest mixed race in the Pacific. At the turn of the 20th century, the Samoan islands were split into two sections. In Tahiti the problem was resolved by French annexation. Western Samoa was the first Pacific Island country to gain its independence (US Department of State, Accessed September 2, 2007). By that convention Britain’s interest in the Gilberts was recognized, although no protectorate was declared until 1892.

In the French territories, colonial rule meant assimilation to French institutions. Social structures and ways of life are changing and diseases associated with western lifestyles such as obesity, coronary artery disease and substance abuse are having devastating effects (Kermode & Tellei, 2005). Such activity was viewed with alarm in the Australian colonies. A similar political history occurred for the Republic of Palau. Whole atolls were destroyed or made uninhabitable, populations moved away from their ancestral homelands, and ways of life were changed as the people were involuntarily exposed to radiation. Germany “bought” the island from Spain in 1899 after the conclusion of the Spanish American War. In 1979, Pohnpei joined three other island states to become the Federated States of Micronesia. In the islands Britain reproduced the pattern of crown colony government, with a governor who represented the king, an executive council of senior officials, and, occasionally, a legislative council to advise the governor. Captured by the Japanese in 1941, it was retaken by the US three years later and today remains, along with Saipan and other neighboring islands, an unincorporated US territory. Sir Arthur Gordon, the island’s first governor, set aside the vast majority of land for Fijians, but he imported thousands of Indian indentured labourers. But the British government would not annex unless the Australian colonies paid the cost of administration, the same argument it was applying to New Zealand’s interest in the Cook Islands. Missionary activity did not begin in New Guinea until 1873. In the Polynesian islands and in Fiji, Britain and Germany attempted to incorporate the authority of the chiefs into their governments, both as advisers and as local officials in the districts, as did the United States in American Samoa. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox.

A number of groups in Australia also looked on New Guinea as a rich possession. Germany annexed northeastern New Guinea in 1884, including the Bismarck Archipelago; in 1886 it took possession of the northern Solomons (Buka and Bougainville). The patrols were brief and infrequent, however, and their effect was limited. German interests were marked in Micronesia, as were those of the French in the New Hebrides. They should have also seen to it that the people developed a strong control over their own destiny and not be dispossessed. Eventually the unstable conditions in the Pacific began to draw in European governments, all of which acknowledged some responsibility for the protection of their nationals and their property. Micronesia includes the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau (Belau), the U. S. Territory of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. Labour recruiting was minimal. Abel DuPetit-Thouars thus took possession of Tahuata and the rest of the southeast Marquesas in 1842 and in the same year persuaded the Tahitians to ask for a French protectorate, which was formally granted in 1843. Then the labour trade moved north to the Solomons, where again there was violence, including the murder of the Anglican bishop in the Santa Cruz group, from which five men had been taken by recruiters.

Britain also had been concerned with the labour trade by which the Queensland (Austl.) Offered as a free service to readers, PIR provides an edited digest of news, commentary and analysis from across the Pacific Islands region, Monday - … The islands become a favourite region for gospel work, well before the similar effort in Africa. The eastern islands became territories of the United States in 1904 and today are known as American Samoa. In 1857 August Unshelm, as agent for J.C. Godeffroy and Son, set up the company’s depot at Apia, and Samoa became the greatest trading centre in the islands; even when Godeffroy failed in 1879, the Deutsche Handel und Plantagengesellschaft (German Trading and Plantation Company) took over, and Samoa remained the favourite colony of the colonial party in German politics. It too was sold to the Germans, annexed by Japan and later became part of the US-managed Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands after World War II. Germany was the official colonizer for one year before Spain formally occupied Pohnpei in 1866. However, a brief look at the history of the colonial and post-colonial world shows us nothing but deeply rooted structural distortions, conflict and lowered sociocultural efficacy.

Other countries had different patterns. In 1839 the archbishop of Chalcedon suggested regular association between the Roman Catholic missions and the French navy, but the French government was also aware of the need for a good naval station for the fleet and for French commerce and for a place of penal settlement. The Samoan islands were populated more than 2,000 years ago and subsequent migrations settled the rest of Polynesia further to the east. Under British protection by 1900, Tonga retained its independence and autonomy and became fully independent in 1970 (US Department of State, Accessed September 2, 2007). Other European countries intervened for different reasons. Others, like myself, hold that colonialism is always more about the "underdevelopment" and the undermining of a people. In the 2000 Census, 37% of the Guam population is native Chamorro (Central Intelligence Agency, Accessed September 2, 2007). France declared a protectorate over Wallis and Futuna in 1887, and, in the same year, a convention set up a mixed British and French naval commission in the New Hebrides. Independence came to Palau in 1994 and it has had a compact of free association with the US since 1994 (Barbour, 1995). Fiji was settled by both Polynesian and Melanesian people around 1500 BC. A more radical critique goes beyond colonialism as residual, and finds signs of recolonisation in much of the third world, and especially in the Pacific. The two powers established a condominium in 1906 that settled difficult legal questions, such as land titles, and set up a joint administration. Samoans are the largest population of Polynesians in the US after Native Hawaiians. The British responded with the Western Pacific Order in Council (1877), which granted the governor of Fiji authority over British nationals and vessels in a wide area of the western Pacific. Since the first contact with Westerners, starting with the Portuguese and Spanish explorers, the islands have been colonized by various European and Asian countries. The process of partition was completed by the United States, which took Guam in the Spanish-American War (1898), annexed the republic of Hawaii that same year, and obtained American (eastern) Samoa by agreement with Germany and Great Britain in 1899 and by deeds of cession (1900, 1904) from island chiefs.