Pacific Islands

▪ region, Pacific Ocean

Introduction

  island geographic region of the Pacific Ocean. It comprises three ethnogeographic groupings—Melanesia (Melanesian culture), Micronesia (Micronesian culture), and Polynesia (Polynesian culture)—but conventionally excludes the neighbouring island continent of Australia, the Asia-related Indonesian (Indonesia), Philippine (Philippines), and Japanese (Japan) archipelagoes, and the Ryukyu (Ryukyu Islands), Bonin (Bonin Islands), volcano, and Kuril (Kuril Islands) island arcs that project seaward from Japan. Neither does the term include the Aleutian (Aleutian Islands) chain or such isolated islands of the Pacific Ocean as the Juan Fernández (Juan Fernández Islands) group off the coast of South America. The more inclusive term Oceania, in its broadest definition, encompasses all the foregoing; however, the term is used less strictly in this article to refer to the Pacific Islands as defined above. The Pacific Island region covers more than 300,000 square miles (800,000 square km) of land—of which New Zealand and the island of New Guinea make up approximately nine-tenths—and millions of square miles of ocean. It is a mixture of independent states, associated states, integral parts of non-Pacific Island countries, and dependent states.

      The great arc of islands located north and east of Australia and south of the Equator is called Melanesia (from the Greek words melas, “black,” and nēsos, “island”) for the predominantly dark-skinned peoples of New Guinea island, the Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu (the New Hebrides), New Caledonia, and Fiji.

      North of the Equator and east of the Philippines are the islands of Micronesia, which form an arc that ranges from Palau, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands in the west eastward through the Federated States of Micronesia (Micronesia) (the Caroline Islands), Nauru, and the Marshall Islands to Kiribati.

      In the eastern Pacific, largely enclosed within a huge triangle formed by the Hawaiian Islands (Hawaii) to the north, New Zealand to the southwest, and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) far to the east, are the many (“poly”) islands of Polynesia. Other components of this widely scattered collection, again generally from west to east, are Tuvalu, Wallis and Futuna, Tokelau, Samoa (the former Western Samoa), American Samoa, Tonga, Niue, the Cook Islands, and French Polynesia (including the Society (Society Islands), Tuamotu (Tuamotu Archipelago), and Marquesas (Marquesas Islands) islands).

      The main Pacific Islands span the Equator obliquely from northwest to southeast and can be divided into two major physiographic regions by island type: continental and oceanic. Deep ocean trenches form the Andesite Line along the eastern borders of Japan, the Marianas, New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, and New Zealand. The line separates the basaltic volcanic islands of the central and eastern Pacific from the islands of the broad western Pacific margin, which are formed mainly of metamorphosed rocks, sediment, and andesitic volcanic material.

 The continental islands, lying southwestward of the Andesite Line, are faulted and folded in mountainous arcs, tend to be higher and larger than those farther east, and have rich soils that support almost every kind of vegetation. Continental islands are generally larger (most notably, the Marianas, New Guinea, the Bismarcks, the Solomons, Vanuatu, Fiji, New Caledonia, and the North and South islands of New Zealand) and have richer mineral-bearing soils than their oceanic counterparts.

 The parent lava material of the oceanic type of island is basalt. Oceanic islands are differentiated as high volcanic-based islands, such as Hawaii, or low coral islands and atolls (atoll), such as the Marshalls. Most Pacific islands are coral formations, although all of these rest on volcanic or other cores. In the shallow waters of the tropics, both continental and oceanic islands attract coral growth in the form of fringing reefs, partially submerged platforms of consolidated limestone, with coral organisms at the ocean edge feeding on materials carried in by waves and currents. Many islands have been gradually submerged through a combination of sinking, caused by geologic action, and flooding, caused by the melting of ice caps. As islands were flooded, coral growth continued outward, producing barrier reefs farther from the shorelines and separated from them by lagoons.

 A coral atoll results when still further flooding reduces an island to a submarine condition. The usually irregular reef continues to build up in the warm shallows. It encircles a clear-surfaced lagoon of moderate depth and in time supports a number of islets built up from reef debris to 20–30 feet (6–9 metres) above sea level. Rain catchments are usually the only source of fresh water on atolls.

      The successive geologic lifting of some islands above sea level has created a variety of “raised” coral formations. The northern half of Guam, for example, is a coralline limestone plateau with a general elevation of about 500 feet (150 metres), while the mountains in the southern half of the island, formed by volcanic activity, reach a maximum elevation of over 1,300 feet (400 metres). Nauru and Banaba (in Kiribati) are raised coral islands that stand at elevations of about 210 and 285 feet (65 and 90 metres), respectively. They have deeper soil and a more adequate water supply than atoll islets, as well as surface deposits of phosphate rock (derived from guano) that have been mined commercially.

      The climate of the Pacific Islands is generally tropical (except in New Zealand, which has a temperate climate), with temperatures, humidity, and rainfall relatively uniform throughout the year. Temperature varies from averages in the low 80s F (about 28 °C) on both Nauru and Kiribati to an average in the low 60s F (about 15 °C) on Norfolk Island, one of the southernmost Pacific Islands. Most vegetation is derived from Indonesia and New Guinea, and its generic variety declines eastward across the Pacific. Local environmental differences and relative isolation have resulted in the evolution of numerous new endemic species. The introduction of new species from throughout the world has also markedly altered island flora. Only a small proportion of the total land area is arable and, outside New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, is devoted mostly to the cultivation of coconut and cassava. Most of the larger islands also support some livestock. As much as two-thirds of the Pacific Islands' total land area is forested. Most of the islands are poor in mineral resources.

 The population is concentrated in Papua New Guinea, New Zealand (which has a majority of people of European descent), Hawaii, Fiji, and Solomon Islands. Most Pacific Islands are densely populated, and habitation tends to be concentrated along the coasts.

      Melanesians make up more than three-fourths of the total indigenous population of the Pacific Islands. Polynesians account for more than one-sixth of the total, and Micronesians constitute about one-twentieth. People of European origin account for as much as one-third of the Pacific Islands' population if New Zealand is included in the total and less than one-tenth if it is not; outside New Zealand the largest concentration of people of European origin is in Hawaii.

      Several hundred distinct languages are spoken in the Pacific Islands; these are mostly Austronesian in origin. Most islanders have some familiarity with English or French; one or the other of these is the official language of virtually all Pacific Islands. Christianity has largely supplanted traditional beliefs and practices, although in some areas, such as Papua New Guinea, Christian faith is often combined with traditional practices.

      In general the Pacific Islands have developing economies in which both public and private sectors participate. The gross national product (GNP) per capita varies widely. Agriculture, fishing, and services are generally the largest economic sectors, and mining is important on a few of the islands. Subsistence farming predominates on the smaller islands. Almost all the islands grow coconuts, which, with copra, are a major export. Pasture is available only on the larger islands; pigs, cattle, and chickens are raised commercially there, and sufficient milk and meat are produced to satisfy domestic needs. Villagers on some smaller islands and New Guinea rear pigs and goats for local use. Subsistence fishing is important everywhere except Hawaii and New Zealand and provides a major source of protein in local diets. There is also commercial fishing, notably in Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Fiji, which account for much of the regional catch.

      Commercially exploitable forests in Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Samoa, and Vanuatu produce timber, sawn wood, and wood products for domestic consumption and export. The other islands generally must import quality lumber. Mineral production is limited to a few of the continental islands, such as New Caledonia, New Guinea, and New Zealand.

      The manufacturing sector, except in Hawaii and New Zealand, is mostly undeveloped and limited to processing fish and agricultural products and producing handicrafts. Other islands with significant manufacturing besides Hawaii and New Zealand include Guam, Fiji, the Northern Marianas, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomons. Regional electricity is generated largely from imported fuels.

      Most Pacific Islands' annual imports (excluding those of New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Hawaii) far exceed exports. Tourism and remittances from expatriates only partially offset the trade deficits. Frozen or canned fish, minerals, copra, cocoa, coffee, tea, and spices are among the leading exports, mainly to Japan, France, the United States, and Australia. Machinery and transport equipment, mineral fuels, food, and manufactured goods are among the chief imports and come mainly from Australia, France, Japan, and the United States. Only a small proportion of the Pacific Islands' external trade is intraregional.

 Tourism is very important to the Pacific Ocean islands. Attractions include fine beaches, good fishing and boating, and local customs and crafts. French Polynesia, Guam, Hawaii, Fiji, and New Zealand have the most developed tourist sectors, but many of the other islands place a priority on developing facilities. Most Pacific Islands that are overseas territories of other countries receive budgetary and development aid, mainly from the continental governing countries, while the smaller independent island states receive aid particularly from Australia and New Zealand, as well as from Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Air transport and interisland shipping are the principal means of transport. Many of the island groups have international airports. Extensive road networks are limited to the larger islands.

      The remainder of this article covers the history of the region. For more detailed discussion of the land and people of individual island groups and states, see the articles American Samoa, Caroline Islands, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, Line Islands, Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia (Micronesia), Midway Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Island, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wake Island, and Wallis and Futuna. For discussion of the arts and cultures of the region, see the articles Oceanic art and architecture (art and architecture, Oceanic), Oceanic music and dance (music and dance, Oceanic), Oceanic literature, Melanesian culture, Micronesian culture, and Polynesian culture. Area (excluding Indonesian New Guinea and the Hawaiian Islands but including Papua New Guinea) 317,739 square miles (833,926 square km). Pop. (2007 est.; excluding Indonesian New Guinea and the Hawaiian Islands but including Papua New Guinea) 13,518,070.

Early period

      The prehistory of the Pacific Islands, the period before written records begin, extends back at least 33,000 years, according to archaeological remains in the Bismarck Archipelago, and migration to the region may have begun more than 40,000 years ago. Settlers had reached every habitable island by the 2nd millennium CE. Since the arrival of Europeans in the early 16th century, the cultures, populations, and economies of the Pacific Islands have been transformed to varying extents, at first by contact with passing explorers and then, from the late 18th century, by the influence of more permanent visitors such as castaways, beachcombers, missionaries, and traders. During the 19th and 20th centuries, settlers flowed in, labourers immigrated or were brought in from other countries (predominantly India and China), and European administrators arrived. Missionaries and immigrants still make up significant segments of the population on the islands today, although European governments, with the exception of that of France, have entirely withdrawn from the region.

      Historical documents for the region are chiefly of European origin and are therefore the products of people who may not accurately have depicted cultures different from their own—cultures they perceived and understood only imperfectly. This distortion can be corrected to some extent by using the findings of social anthropology and the oral traditions of the Pacific Island people, but these sources may describe the past inaccurately because they serve contemporary purposes; they do not record the past for its own sake. But the main historiographic challenge provided by the region is its diversity. Some 10,000 islands scattered across a wide expanse of ocean, a variety of cultures, hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages, and diverse historical experiences make generalizations difficult. (The arts of the region are treated in separate articles; see Oceanic art and architecture (art and architecture, Oceanic); Oceanic music and dance (music and dance, Oceanic); and Oceanic literature.)

The influence of physical geography

      Because of the distances involved, contact between islands has never been easy. In addition, the islands' physical environments are isolated and varied. The large continental islands of Melanesia have widely varied landscapes, climates, and soil types; moreover, their rugged terrain has facilitated social isolation. The smaller volcanic high islands have greater homogeneity and easily support life well above the subsistence level.

      The physical environment did not determine the kinds of society that developed, but it did limit them. The large islands of Melanesia set the stage for profound cultural differences between people of the coast and those of the interior, particularly those in the more isolated valleys. Thus, Melanesia became characterized by many small groups of people, divided from each other by language and custom. There was little political and social organization, because most families and communities expended their energies on gathering food and other basic necessities. The high volcanic islands of Polynesia (Polynesian culture) offered no such barriers to social and political unity. Their fertility allowed elaborate social, religious, and political rituals to develop. These geographic and cultural contrasts between the Pacific Islands, which were obvious to early European visitors, concealed a similarity: the societies all rested on the principle of reciprocity. Whether the society was small, with leadership a matter of acquiring influence rather than hereditary position, or larger, with chiefs who were looked on with awe and treated with reverence, every gift or service had to be reciprocated.

Origins of Oceanian peoples

      Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d'Urville (Dumont d'Urville, Jules-Sébastien-César), an early 19th-century French navigator and explorer, classified the islanders as Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian. The apparent differences between the islanders were regarded as evidence of separate waves of ethnically different people out of Southeast Asia (Southeast Asia, history of). (A discredited variant theory traced the Polynesians to South America). More recent research suggests that the differences arose within the islands themselves, through the intermixture of an original settlement of non-Austronesian-language speakers (see Papuan languages) from Southeast Asia with a later wave of Austronesian speakers (see Austronesian languages). The earlier wave of settlement occurred in Melanesia at least 33,000 years ago and probably, since New Guinea and Australia were then linked by land, at dates contemporaneous with Australian dates of settlement, extending back some 40,000 years or more. Secure dates in the interior of New Guinea approach 30,000 years ago. However, more sites must be uncovered to increase the level of certainty. Linguists have used a chronology of sound changes to trace the time and place of dispersion of language groups, but a considerable number of the languages of Oceania are as yet unstudied and unclassified. Geneticists have conducted studies in order to establish connections between contemporary human groups, thereby revealing past migrations, but systematic sampling has not yet been carried out.

 The later Austronesian (Austronesian languages) speakers, members of the prehistoric Lapita culture, which produced the well-known pottery known as Lapita ware, established themselves in the Bismarck Archipelago about 4,000 years ago. They then spread to Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, which have been regarded as the Polynesian homeland. Newer evidence, however, has led to disagreement among prehistorians about the Lapita cultural complex: it may have arrived in Fiji with a later wave of seafaring immigrants. There is also disagreement about the speed with which the Lapita culture, distinctively linked with the Polynesians, moved from Southeast Asia through Melanesia into Fiji and thence to eastern Polynesia. The Marianas (Mariana Islands) were probably settled about 1500 BCE. It is possible that the Marquesas (Marquesas Islands) were settled as early as the 2nd century BCE, rather than 300 CE, a date at which settlements may have occurred in Hawaii. The Society Islands were occupied by at least the 9th century CE.

      At the time of European contact, Oceanian societies had developed a technology based on stone, bone, and shell objects, and they cultivated tubers and tree fruits, most of which were of Southeast Asian origin. Genetic research has shown that some of the cultigens were native to wider areas, including New Guinea. The most notable exception was the sweet potato, which had spread from South America through most of Polynesia in pre-European times but only marginally into Melanesia. There were three main groups of domesticated animals: pigs, dogs, and chickens. The coastal people had developed fishing techniques and considerable skills as sailors. Navigation between the closer islands was well developed, and regular trade may have occurred between several islands. Some skills were lost; pottery, for example, disappeared in Samoa and the Marquesas shortly after initial settlement.

European exploration

The 16th and 17th centuries

      The world of the Pacific Islands was not a static one, but changes were slow compared with those that attended European (European exploration) contact. Vasco Núñez de Balboa (Balboa, Vasco Núñez de) was the first European to sight the Pacific, in 1513; seven years later Ferdinand Magellan (Magellan, Ferdinand) rounded South America and sailed across the ocean, missing the main island groups but probably encountering Pukapuka Atoll, in the Tuamotu Archipelago, and Guam. After his death in the Philippines, his expedition encountered some of the Carolines (Caroline Islands). These northern islands were further explored by the Spaniards as they established a galley trade between Manila, in the Philippines, and Acapulco, in western Mexico. The next major Spanish explorations were made by Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira and Pedro Fernández de Quirós. In 1567 the former set out from Peru to discover the great southern continent that was believed to exist in the South Pacific. He reached the Solomons (Solomon Islands) but failed to find them again on his second journey, during which he died. In 1606 his chief pilot, Quirós, after finding part of the Tuamotu Archipelago, reached the northern Cook Islands, Tikopia (a small Solomon Islands atoll), and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). One of his companions, Luis Váez de Torres, charted southeastern New Guinea and then the strait (later named for him) between that island and Australia, although the discovery was unknown to later sailors. These Spanish expeditions were motivated by the search for riches, by zeal to extend Christianity, and, in the case of Quirós, by an interest in exploration for its own sake. But with the voyage of Torres, the Spanish effort was ended.

      Thereafter, the Dutch, who were already established in Indonesia, entered the Pacific. They too looked for a southern continent. In 1615–16 the Dutch navigator Jakob Le Maire traveled from the east through the Tuamotus to Tonga and New Ireland and New Hanover in the Bismarck Archipelago. In 1642 Abel Janszoon Tasman (Tasman, Abel Janszoon), sailing from Batavia (now Jakarta), the Dutch headquarters in the East Indies, saw New Zealand, Tasmania, Tonga, some of the Fiji Islands, and New Britain. The Dutch were primarily interested in commerce; they found none. Tasman thought that New Zealand was part of the great southern continent.

      The effect of these visitors on Oceania was transitory. The Europeans stayed for periods of at most a few months. Their contacts with the islanders were based on simple barter, but the demands they made on food supplies often caused hostilities in which some European and many islanders' lives were lost, as on Guadalcanal (Guadalcanal Island), in Solomon Islands, and in the Marquesas during Mendaña's visits.

The 18th century

 During the early 18th century, the extent of Oceania was further revealed. The English buccaneer William Dampier (Dampier, William) visited New Hanover, New Britain, and New Ireland in command of a Royal Navy ship. Dampier's journey was a forerunner of the voyages of scientific exploration that followed, and he proved that those islands were separated from each other and from Australia. In 1722 the Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeveen crossed the Pacific from east to west on a voyage of exploration that also had commercial objectives. He reached Easter Island, more of the Tuamotu Archipelago, the northern islands of the Society group, and some of the Samoan islands.

 These voyages were not essentially different from earlier ones, but they too foreshadowed the scientific interest of the later 18th century. Further study was delayed by European wars. But in 1765 the English admiral John Byron (Byron, John) (grandfather of poet Lord George Gordon Byron (Byron, George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron)), who was sent by the British Admiralty in search of the supposed southern continent, visited more of the Tuamotus and the southern Gilberts (Gilbert Islands). In 1767 Samuel Wallis and Philip Carteret followed, but their ships were separated as they entered the Pacific. Wallis reached Tahiti, more of the Tuamotus, and the Society Islands, while Carteret found Pitcairn Island and revisited the Solomons that Mendaña had visited, although he did not so identify them. This was left to the French following Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (Bougainville, Louis-Antoine de)'s visit in 1768, during which he also charted some of the New Hebrides and Rossel Island, in the Louisiade Archipelago.

      Dampier's A New Voyage Round the World and Bougainville's description of the “noble savage” in Tahiti were particularly influential in Europe. The interest their journeys created was in part responsible for the instructions given to the greatest of all 18th-century explorers of Oceania, James Cook (Cook, James). After three voyages he left others little to do but fill in occasional details of Oceania. Cook was sent (1768–71) to observe the transit of the planet Venus at Tahiti in 1769 and then to search for the great southern continent. He reached some of the Society Islands, but he also circumnavigated New Zealand, and he defined the limits of eastern Australia. During his second voyage (1772–75), he proved that there was no southern continent, but he also charted further lands in Oceania: in the Tuamotus, the Cooks, the Marquesas, Fiji, Niue, Tonga, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and Norfolk Island. During his third voyage (1776–79), which was mainly concerned with the North Pacific, he located some of the Tongan group, Christmas Island ( Kiritimati Atoll), and the Sandwich Islands ( Hawaii), where he was killed in 1779. He had completed the main work of exploration with an exactitude previously unknown. Although his contacts with islanders were not essentially different from those of his predecessors, his relations with them were nevertheless more prolonged and more humane. His exploration of eastern Australia, through the account of his naturalist, Joseph Banks (Banks, Sir Joseph, Baronet), was of great importance in Oceania because it led to the founding of towns on the Australian coast, relatively close to the islands.

Early European settlement

Itinerants

      Oceania became a supply source in 1788 for the settlement of Australia. Pigs from Tahiti were landed at Sydney in 1793, and until 1826 the trade (international trade) remained important, although it was subject to price fluctuations. The competition among Europeans for sandalwood, pearl shell, and bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber)—valuable cargoes that attracted ships from the Australian colony—further involved Oceania with the European world. Sandalwood was found in Fiji in 1804, and for the next decade it attracted European traders. The sealing industry drew seal hunters to New Zealand, and in the 1790s fur traders wintered in Hawaii. All of these sustained and prolonged contacts began to affect the island societies. In addition, there were increasing numbers of European castaways and beachcombers, who had begun to live in the islands from the days of first European contact, because of the expansion of commercial shipping in the region. Castaways, such as HMS Bounty mutineers who went to Tahiti in 1789, began to alter the political climate by using their muskets to support the chiefs who befriended them.

Missionary (mission) activity

      Christian (Christianity) missionaries traveled to Oceania with the deliberate intention of changing its societies. In 1797 the London Missionary Society (LMS) sent a party to Tahiti. After some vicissitudes the missionaries converted a prominent chief, Pomare II, who controlled the area of Matavai Bay, where European ships had called since Wallis's landing. The LMS failed in its first attempts in Tonga and the Marquesas, although it was more successful in Huahine (in the Society Islands), the Tuamotus, the Cook Islands, and, later, Samoa. English and American missionaries then tried to win over additional Polynesian chiefs so that the masses would follow. Indigenous converts were sent to other islands to spread the word. In 1823 John Williams of the LMS took Polynesian missionaries to Rarotonga and other islands, and he took Christianity to Samoa in 1830. The Methodists began arriving in Tonga in 1822 and Fiji in 1835. Roman Catholic missionaries began working in New Caledonia in the 1840s, and, at about the same time, the Church of England began to penetrate into Oceania from New Zealand. Meanwhile, Polynesian societies were facing varying degrees of lawlessness and disorder at the hands of European beachcombers and traders. British missionaries responded to the situation by creating missionary kingdoms, whereas the French established direct political control.

      In Tahiti, Hawaii, and Tonga, native chiefs became powerful kings by gaining access to European arms and support, consolidating power, and accepting missionary advisers and missionary-designed codes of law. In 1819 Pomare II of Tahiti promulgated such a code. In Tonga, Taufaʿahau took the name George in 1833, and in 1845, when he took the Tongan title Tuʿi Kanokupolu, he became king of Tonga; during his reign Tonga became unified and adopted a constitution (1875). The missionary kingdoms addressed problems of European lawlessness in the islands by attempting to enforce a scriptural code of law. Although missionaries could not prevent the sale of arms, they could at least ensure that these passed into the hands of friendly chiefs. However, the authority of the “kings” was challenged from two sides. Many opposed them because they believed that, by becoming Christian, they had cut themselves off from the mana (a Polynesian and Melanesian religious concept sometimes described as an all-pervasive energy) that came from the old gods. In Tahiti in 1830 there was a revolt against the new Christian order by supporters of the old ways; in 1831 there was a similar reaction in Tonga. In Samoa, where the holder of the chiefly title Malietoa had embraced Christianity from Tahitian missionaries, heretical movements arose. Traditional beliefs thus resisted the chiefs and their missionary supporters. At the same time, European traders also resisted the political authority of the kings. Dissidents and heretics looked to these Europeans for leadership, and they turned to their own national governments for protection. The French took control of the Society Islands and nearby archipelagoes beginning in 1842. They also established missionary control of Wallis and Futuna.

      In Melanesia events transpired differently. In Fiji the missionaries who landed in 1835, accompanied by an envoy from George of Tonga, made no headway with the rising chief Cakobau, who was not converted until 1854, when his fortunes were at a low ebb and he needed Tongan support. Elsewhere in Melanesia, the absence of chiefs meant that missionary work had to be conducted with small groups of people and repeated every few miles. There was no wholesale conversion of the kind that had happened in Polynesia. The LMS failed to win over the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) in the 1840s, and the Anglican Melanesian mission in the Solomons made slow progress in the 1850s. Mission work in New Guinea was divided into four spheres of influence in Papua but did not begin systematically until the 1870s. Micronesia (Micronesian culture) was considered a backwater. The Spaniards had established missionaries in the Marianas in 1668, but the missionaries in the Carolines were killed in 1733. The main effort came from the Hawaiian Evangelical Mission in the 1850s, which dissolved the old ties of society by attacking the supernatural sanctions that supported leadership and social mores. Missionaries thus altered political structures, introduced both European goods and the desire for them, and acted as intermediaries between Pacific Island societies and other Europeans—as political advisers, as agents, and as interpreters.

Growth of trading communities

      Beachcombers and castaways preceded missionaries in many of the islands, but trading communities grew partly because of the missionaries' work in restraining native violence. Those individuals were initially pork traders in Tahiti, but European captains followed valuable cargoes from island to island. When the supply of sandalwood was depleted in Fiji by 1813, the traders then found it in Hawaii in the 1820s, in the New Hebrides in 1825, and in New Caledonia in 1840. pearl shell attracted traders to the Tuamotus in 1807, and the sandalwood trade declined as supplies were exhausted. However, Europeans in both trades were harsh and sometimes committed atrocities, and pearling declined as islanders began to take reprisals. The needs of the Oceanians also changed the character of trade. Once native polities had been established, the demand for muskets fell off; under missionary influence the demand for alcohol was limited. Islanders increasingly desired clothing and hardware. Exchange trading encouraged the establishment of resident agents in the islands, who met the needs of the whalers who went ashore to refit their vessels. After 1840, exchange trading also met the needs of the staple trade of the islands—coconut oil, derived from copra and used for soap and candles. Copra trading became the mainstay of European trade because even islands that had no other resources had coconut palms.

      Such commerce promoted the growth of the port towns and of resident trading communities. Papeete in Tahiti, Apia in Samoa, and Levuka in Fiji became centres for Europeans, including respectable traders as well as lawless people who might be escaped convicts from New South Wales (Australia) or others seeking to free themselves from the rules of European societies. Native kings and visiting European captains had difficulty establishing order in these types of frontier towns.

Plantation societies

      Problems became more serious after permanent European settlers arrived. In Fiji, for example, following Cakobau's first offer to cede the islands to Great Britain in 1858, Europeans began to establish plantations of coconuts and then, during the American Civil War, of cotton and afterward of sugarcane. Developments in Samoa were similar. But planters needed land on a much larger scale than did traders, and they needed labour in much greater quantities to work the plantations. Land sales caused friction because “ownership” was not an Oceanian concept, and land titles were thus disputed or resented. Labour recruiting often caused the breakup of traditional societies if too many males left their communities and the creation of immigrant labour communities if they did not. By 1870 there were 2,000 such permanent European residents in Fiji.

      The settlers desired political and economic stability, including secure land titles and a large labour supply, but the missionary kingdoms and independent native governments failed to satisfy their requirements. In Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa, and Fiji no native authority was able to keep order in the novel circumstances created by European enterprise; in any case, the native kings were themselves open to challenge within their own societies. Pomare II encountered revolt in Tahiti; Samoan politics were always a matter of rivalry between chiefs; and Cakobau's government was threatened by the Tongan chief Maʿafu, who had established his own confederacy in the Lau Group in Fiji.

Colonial rule (colonialism, Western)

Foreign intervention and control

      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. The French government was the first to intervene, after two Roman Catholic missionaries were expelled from Tahiti in 1836. In the same year, two more were deported from Hawaii. 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. 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. 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). Other European countries intervened for different reasons. 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. The British (British Empire) government appointed consuls to some islands, but their powers to maintain order were limited and, except for the visits of warships, unenforceable. The United States also appointed consuls.

      Consular officers often quarreled with European entrepreneurs, and both became involved in the internal politics of Oceanian societies. In Tahiti the problem was resolved by French annexation. In Samoa, after a tripartite supervision set up by the Samoa Act of 1889 came to grief in European rivalries and Samoan factionalism over chieftainships, an agreement of 1899 divided the Samoa group between Germany and the United States; Britain received compensation elsewhere. Britain was mainly concerned with the activity of its nationals, and it accepted control of Fiji in 1874 primarily because native authority had broken down. 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. Britain also had been concerned with the labour trade by which the Queensland (Austl.) plantations sometimes took islanders under doubtful or brutal conditions. In the 1860s this trade flourished in the New Hebrides, and missionaries protested the violence there. 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. 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. The problem still remained, however, of non-British nationals in islands that had neither native kings nor European governors, especially in Melanesia.

      European government, like both mission and commercial enterprise, had been slower to penetrate Melanesia. Missionary activity did not begin in New Guinea until 1873. Labour recruiting was minimal. The first main activity was a gold rush in 1877, but German traders had arrived on the northern coast in 1873, followed by the firm of Hernsheim & Co. (a general trader) in 1875. Such activity was viewed with alarm in the Australian colonies. German interests were marked in Micronesia, as were those of the French in the New Hebrides. A number of groups in Australia also looked on New Guinea as a rich possession. 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. When the Australian colonies agreed to pay, the British government acted. 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. Germany annexed northeastern New Guinea in 1884, including the Bismarck Archipelago; in 1886 it took possession of the northern Solomons (Buka (Buka Island) and Bougainville (Bougainville Island)). The British established a protectorate over the rest of the Solomons in 1893. In Micronesia the Germans, after an attempt to annex the Spanish possession of the Carolines in 1885, finally bought them from Spain with Palau and the Marianas (excepting Guam) in 1899. They had annexed the Marshalls in 1885 and, under a convention with Britain of 1886, the phosphate-rich island of Nauru. By that convention Britain's interest in the Gilberts was recognized, although no protectorate was declared until 1892. The Ellice Islands were added to it, and the group became the Gilbert and Ellice Islands protectorate. 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. The two powers established a condominium in 1906 that settled difficult legal questions, such as land titles, and set up a joint administration. 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.

Patterns of colonial administration

      Almost the whole of Oceania passed under the control of European powers and the United States between 1842 and the end of the century, with the exception of Tonga, which remained under British protection (from 1900) with a consul who was not to interfere in internal affairs. 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. Gov. Arthur Gordon set up a system of native administration that incorporated the chiefs (chief); the island was divided into provinces and districts that, on the information available to Gordon, represented the old divisions of Fiji, and over each he tried to select the chief to take administrative office. Even in Melanesia, where chieftainship was not highly developed, the British attempted to appoint chiefs who were men of influence. The first administrator of British New Guinea was a former officer in Gordon's government, William MacGregor, who first tried to appoint chiefs and then settled for village constables. The Australians, who took over British New Guinea in 1906 and rechristened it Papua (Papua New Guinea), followed the British pattern. 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.

      Other countries had different patterns. The Germans tried to administer their colonies through commercial companies, such as the German New Guinea Company in northeastern New Guinea. Only when they failed did the imperial government assume responsibility (1899). In the Marshalls the German firms known as the Jaluit Gesellschaft became a chartered company under a government commissioner in 1885. 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. In the French territories, colonial rule meant assimilation to French institutions. 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. In effect, the governor ruled by administrative decree. When Hawaii was annexed in 1898, the president of the republic became a U.S. governor. One year after eastern Samoa (American Samoa) was given to the United States under the convention of 1899, Pres. William McKinley (McKinley, William) placed it under the authority of the Department of the Navy (United States Navy, The); 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. These colonial governments were adapted to local circumstances. 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. 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. In Melanesia the colonial powers appointed local headmen. The Germans and the British used appointed headmen in New Guinea and the Solomons, and the system was supervised by a patrol of European officers with an escort of armed native police. The patrols were brief and infrequent, however, and their effect was limited.

Colonial rule after World War I

      The pattern of colonial rule in Oceania was altered by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. An Australian force occupied German New Guinea, and a New Zealand force took German (Western) Samoa; Japan took the Carolines, the Marshalls, Palau, and the Marianas. At the end of the war these German territories, together with Nauru, were retained by the occupying powers as mandates under the League of Nations (Nations, League of). The professed aim of the administrators was to help the people of these territories to stand on their own feet under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.

 This stress on Oceanian interests was not new, but it became an international standard. Still, the first step was to establish government control and law and order. Many colonial governments concentrated on opening the interior to settlement, because in New Guinea, the Solomons, and many parts of Melanesia, the interior was rarely known, let alone controlled. The government-sponsored exploration in 1933 of the grass valleys of New Guinea, which had been known for a decade by missionaries and miners, presented the Australian administration with the problem of 750,000 “new” people. Australia's resources for administering New Guinea were spread thin. Health and education were left to the missions. By contrast, Fiji was more developed. Labourers were imported from India to work the sugar plantations from 1879 under an indenture system that lasted until 1920. The government then turned its attention to matters concerning the education and health of the large Indian population of Fiji, but the increase in this population raised the difficult question of the native Fijians' future. They played a minor part in the economic life of the colony, and the official policy was to keep them within their villages under a separate system of administration, which was reorganized in 1944 as the Fijian Administration—to be virtually a state within a state. But the government's resources were too limited to introduce welfare measures or to promote development on any great scale. A good deal depended on the missions and other private organizations. In Samoa, where the old society had retained its organization, there was resistance to change. The New Zealand administration of Western Samoa had begun with the objective of promoting the welfare of the indigenous people, which meant health, education, and better use of the land. By recognizing Samoan councils it tried to ensure Samoan support, but the policies broke down in execution. In American Samoa the U.S. Navy provided welfare services as part of its routine work, but, because its principal concern was running the naval base, it could do little more. In French Polynesia policy was aimed at making the people French citizens. The welfare services were directed from Paris, but available funding was limited.

World War II and its aftermath

 The islands were directly affected by external events such as the Great Depression of the 1930s (Great Depression) and the fluctuations in world markets for copra, sugar, and other products of Oceania. The principal achievements of the colonial powers were improvements in medical care, partly through control of such endemic diseases as malaria in Melanesia, and maintenance of a rough balance between European and indigenous interests. But welfare policies and island administration were both interrupted by World War II. The Japanese were established in the northern Oceania, where they treated their mandates as part of Japan itself. In 1941 they advanced into the rest of Oceania, reaching and controlling most of New Guinea and, at the peak of their advance, much of the Solomons. New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, Fiji, and the islands of Polynesia were not occupied, but the effects of the war made colonial government there secondary to military operations. After the war the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations replaced the mandates, and all of the colonial powers accepted that independence or self-government was the aim of their rule. The Pacific Islanders themselves had been exposed to more intensive European (and Japanese) influences, and their horizons had widened. The colonial powers felt a greater urgency to promote development and to provide greater resources to achieve it.

      Colonial governments were reorganized to give indigenous people a part in government. In Western Samoa in 1947 the Legislative Council was given a Samoan majority and considerable powers. In American Samoa naval rule was replaced in 1951 by civilian control, and a legislature of two houses was set up, which by 1960 had become a lawmaking body of Samoans. In French Polynesia and New Caledonia, elected assemblies were given considerable local autonomy in 1956; both territories chose to stay within the French Community in 1958. The trend toward a limited degree of internal autonomy and increased political participation by native residents continued in the 1960s in Fiji, the Cook Islands, and other Pacific dependencies.

Independence movements

      For strategic and economic reasons, despite UN support for self-determination after 1945, the Pacific has not been completely decolonized. France granted French citizenship in its Pacific territories in 1946; however, it jailed nationalist leaders in Tahiti and New Caledonia during unrest in the 1950s. The United States, which had strategic interest in the North Pacific territories it acquired, consolidated military positions in the area following World War II. The Northern Marianas chose to become a commonwealth of the United States, whereas resource-poor Marshall Islands, Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia all voted for free association with the United States, securing self-government but continued economic and military ties. The Cook Islands and Niue chose free association with New Zealand, which granted them local self-government and New Zealand citizenship and provided subsidies. However, most of the other Pacific Islands had achieved independence by 1980. The newly independent territories represented a sizable addition to the ranks of microstates.

      The speed of political development in the Pacific Islands was partly a matter of external pressure in the United Nations, but the colonial governments, with the exception of the French, were already moving toward self-government or independence. There were no mass nationalist movements, as in Africa and Asia, to whose demands colonial governments responded. The reaction to European rule usually took the form of nativistic movements or cargo cults (cargo cult) in which rituals attempted to secure “cargo” diverted by Europeans. Occasionally, as with the Mau (“Strongly Held View”) movement in Western Samoa in the 1920s and '30s, there was more overtly political action. In Fiji and Papua New Guinea, political parties formed. In the French territories of French Polynesia and New Caledonia, European-style political parties have demanded greater local autonomy, while a minority has sought independence. Violent confrontations did break out in the 1980s between separatists and French supporters, followed by protests in the 1990s against French nuclear weapons testing in the region. As a result, accords were signed in 1988 and 1998 regarding a timetable for self-determination. In Papua New Guinea a long-simmering domestic secessionist movement on Bougainville Island reached a crisis in the late 1980s; following years of violent conflict, Bougainville, together with nearby islands, was granted the status of an autonomous region in the early 21st century. However, mass nationalist movements were largely absent from the Pacific Islands, in part because colonial governments had given priority to regional interests but mainly because of the nature of the island societies, in which kinship ties and a preference for consensus as “correct” behaviour led to “the Melanesian way” or “the Pacific way” as a style of politics.

Francis James West Sophie Foster

Additional Reading

Geography

Comprehensive surveys of the region include Brij V. Lal and Kate Fortune (eds.), The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia (2000); Moshe Rapaport (ed.), The Pacific Islands: Environment and Society (1999); Frederica M. Bunge and Melinda W. Cooke (eds.), Oceania: A Regional Study, 2nd ed. (1985); and Norman Douglas and Ngaire Douglas (eds.), Pacific Islands Yearbook, 17th ed. (1994), a detailed reference. Large-scale maps are found in Atlas of the South Pacific, 2nd ed. (1986), published by the New Zealand government.The classic demographic study is Norma McArthur, Island Populations of the Pacific (1967, reprinted 1983). Also useful are Vern Carroll (ed.), Pacific Atoll Populations (1975); Douglas L. Oliver, Oceania: The Native Cultures of Australia and the Pacific Islands, 2 vol. (1989); and Leonard Mason and Patricia Hereniko (eds.), In Search of a Home (1987), which studies the lives of migrants in urban centres. Ron Crocombe, The Pacific Islands and the USA (1995), examines the trust territories. Current writings about the area are found in Islands Business (Fiji); Pacific Magazine (Hawaii); Pacific Economic Bulletin (Australia); and Pacific Islands Monthly (Fiji).Politics is studied in Peter Larmour and Ropate Qalo (eds.), Decentralisation in the South Pacific: Local, Provincial, and State Government in Twenty Countries (1985); Uentabo Fakaofo Neemia, Cooperation and Conflict: Costs, Benefits, and National Interests in Pacific Regional Cooperation (1986); and Haruhiro Fukui (ed.), Political Parties of Asia and the Pacific, 2 vol. (1985), an encyclopaedic reference. Journals include Pacific Affairs: An International Review of Asia and the Pacific (Canada).

History

The best general histories of the precolonial Pacific are Steven Roger Fischer, A History of the Pacific Islands (2002); K.R. Howe, Where the Waves Fall: A New South Sea Islands History from First Settlement to Colonial Rule (1984, reissued 1991); and I.C. (Ian Christopher) Campbell, History of the Pacific Islands (1989, reprinted with revisions, 1996). Early periods are covered in Geoffrey Irwin, The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific (1992); John Terrell, Prehistory in the Pacific Islands: A Study of Variation in Language, Customs, and Human Biology (1986, reissued 1988); Patrick Vinton Kirch (ed.), Island Societies: Archaeological Approaches to Evolution and Transformation (1986); Peter Bellwood, Man's Conquest of the Pacific: The Prehistory of Southeast Asia and Oceania (1978), and The Polynesians: Prehistory of an Island People, rev. ed. (1987); Matthew Spriggs, The Island Melanesians (1997); Deryck Scarr, History of the Pacific Islands: Kingdoms of the Reefs (1990); Janet Davidson, The Prehistory of New Zealand (1984, reissued 1987); and M.P.K. Sorrenson, Maori Origins and Migrations: The Genesis of Some Pakeha Myths and Legends (1979, reissued with revisions 1990). Donald Denoon, Getting Under the Skin: The Bougainville Copper Agreement and the Creation of the Panguna Mine (2000), is an examination of colonization and its consequences. W.H.R. Rivers, The History of Melanesian Society, 2 vol. (1914, reissued 1968), is a classic study. Robert D. Craig and Frank P. King (eds.), Historical Dictionary of Oceania (1981), is a comprehensive reference source. Other useful material can be found in Donald Denoon, Philippa Mein Smith, and Marivic Wyndham, A History of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific (2000); Donald Denoon et al. (eds.), Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders (1997); and K.R. Howe, Robert C. Kiste, and Brij V. Lal (eds.), Tides of History: The Pacific Islands in the 20th Century (1994). Current research is published in Journal of Pacific History (semiannual; Australia).John Dademo Waiko, A Short History of Papua New Guinea (1993); Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, First Contact (1987); John Garrett, To Live Among the Stars: Christian Origins in Oceania (1982, reissued 1985); and F.J. West, Political Advancement in the South Pacific: A Comparative Study of Colonial Practice in Fiji, Tahiti, and American Samoa (1961, reprinted 1984), contain discussions of colonial influence. Biographies that date from European contact can be found in J.W. Davidson and Deryck Scarr (eds.), Pacific Islands Portraits (1970, reprinted with corrections 1973); and Deryck Scarr (ed.), More Pacific Islands Portraits (1978).The development of Pacific trade and the establishment of exploitative industries are discussed in Dorothy Shineberg, They Came for Sandalwood: A Study of the Sandalwood Trade in the South-West Pacific, 1830–1865 (1967), the first full-length study of trade in the Pacific; H.E. Maude, Of Islands and Men: Studies in Pacific History (1968); O.H.K. Spate, The Spanish Lake (1979), Monopolists and Freebooters (1983), and Paradise Found and Lost (1988); Maslyn Williams and Barrie Macdonald, The Phosphateers: A History of the British Phosphate Commissioners and the Christmas Island Phosphate Commission (1985); K. Buckley and K. Klugman, The History of Burns Philp: The Australian Company in the South Pacific (1981); Jimmy M. Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush: Entrepreneurs and American Overseas Expansion (1994); and Victoria Lockwood, Globalization and Culture Change in the Pacific Islands (2003). Stewart Firth, Nuclear Playground (1987); and Bengt Danielsson and Marie-Thérèse Danielson, Poisoned Reign: French Nuclear Colonialism in the Pacific, 2nd rev. ed. (1986; also published as Moruroa, Mon Amour: The French Nuclear Tests in the Pacific, 1977; originally published in French, 1974), examine the history of nuclear weapons testing in the region. Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires (1992); and Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i, rev. ed. (1999), discuss the issue of sovereignty.Sophie Foster

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