The islands which now form the Republic of Kiribati have been inhabited for at least seven hundred years, and possibly much longer. The initial Austronesian peoples’ population, which remains the overwhelming majority today, was visited by Polynesian and Melanesian invaders before the first European sailors visited the islands in the 17th century. For much of the subsequent period, the main island chain, the Gilbert Islands, was ruled as part of the British Empire. The country gained its independence in 1979 and has since been known as Kiribati.
The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands, is an island country west of the International Date Line and north of the equator in the Micronesia region in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. The territory consists of 29 coral atolls and five islands, divided across two island chains: Ratak in the east and Ralik in the west. 97.87% of its territory is water, the largest proportion of water to land of any sovereign state. The country shares maritime boundaries with Wake Island to the north, Kiribati to the southeast, Nauru to the south, and the Federated States of Micronesia to the west. The capital and largest city is Majuro, home to approximately half of the country's population.
The history of human activity in Nauru, an island country in the Pacific Ocean, began roughly 3,000 years ago when clans settled the island.
Austronesian settlers arrived in the Marshall Islands in the 2nd millennium BC, but there are no historical or oral records of that period. Over time, the Marshallese people learned to navigate over long ocean distances by walap canoe using traditional stick charts.
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the Pacific Ocean were part of the British Empire from 1892 to 1976. They were a protectorate from 1892 to 12 January 1916, and then a colony until 1 January 1976, and were administered as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT) until they became independent. The history of GEIC was mainly characterized by phosphate mining on Ocean Island. In October 1975, these islands were divided by force of law into two separate colonies, and they became independent nations shortly thereafter: the Ellice Islands became Tuvalu in 1978, and the Gilbert Islands became part of Kiribati in 1979.
German Samoa was a German protectorate from 1900 to 1920, consisting of the islands of Upolu, Savai'i, Apolima and Manono, now wholly within the Independent State of Samoa, formerly Western Samoa. Samoa was the last German colonial acquisition in the Pacific basin, received following the Tripartite Convention signed at Washington on 2 December 1899 with ratifications exchanged on 16 February 1900. It was the only German colony in the Pacific, aside from the Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory in China, that was administered separately from German New Guinea.
German New Guinea consisted of the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea and several nearby island groups and was the first part of the German colonial empire. The mainland part of the territory, called Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, became a German protectorate in 1884. Other island groups were added subsequently. The Bismarck Archipelago, and the North Solomon Islands were declared a German protectorate in 1885. The Caroline Islands, Palau, and the Mariana Islands were bought from Spain in 1899. German New Guinea annexed the formerly separate German Protectorate of Marshall Islands, which also included Nauru, in 1906. German Samoa, though part of the German colonial empire, was not part of German New Guinea.
Jaluit Atoll is a large coral atoll of 91 islands in the Pacific Ocean and forms a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Its total land area is 11.34 square kilometers (4.38 sq mi), and it encloses a lagoon with an area of 690 square kilometers (270 sq mi). Most of the land area is on the largest islet (motu) of Jaluit (10.4 km2). Jaluit is approximately 220 kilometers (140 mi) southwest of Majuro. Jaluit Atoll is a designated conservation area and Ramsar Wetland.
The German colonial empire constituted the overseas colonies, dependencies, and territories of the German Empire. Unified in 1871, the chancellor of this time period was Otto von Bismarck. Short-lived attempts at colonization by individual German states had occurred in preceding centuries, but Bismarck resisted pressure to construct a colonial empire until the Scramble for Africa in 1884. Claiming much of the remaining uncolonized areas of Africa, Germany built the third-largest colonial empire at the time, after the British and French. The German colonial empire encompassed parts of several African countries, including parts of present-day Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, as well as northeastern New Guinea, Samoa and numerous Micronesian islands.
Arthur Charles Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Baron Stanmore was a Scottish Liberal Party politician and colonial administrator. He had extensive contact with Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.
The South Seas Mandate, officially the Mandate for the German Possessions in the Pacific Ocean Lying North of the Equator, was a League of Nations mandate in the "South Seas" given to the Empire of Japan by the League of Nations following World War I. The mandate consisted of islands in the north Pacific Ocean that had been part of German New Guinea within the German colonial empire until they were occupied by Japan during World War I. Japan governed the islands under the mandate as part of the Japanese colonial empire until World War II, when the United States captured the islands. The islands then became the United Nations-established Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands governed by the United States. The islands are now part of Palau, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
The British Phosphate Commissioners (BPC) was a board of Australian, British, and New Zealand representatives who managed extraction of phosphate from Christmas Island, Nauru, and Banaba from 1920 until 1981.
John T. Arundel was an English entrepreneur who was instrumental in the development of the mining of phosphate rock on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Banaba. Williams & Macdonald (1985) described J. T. Arundel as "a remarkable example of that mid-Victorian phenomenon, the upright, pious and adventurous Christian English businessman."
Nauruan nationality law is regulated by the 1968 Constitution of Nauru, as amended; the Naoero Citizenship Act of 2017, and its revisions; custom; and international agreements entered into by the Nauruan government. These laws determine who is, or is eligible to be, a national of Nauru. The legal means to acquire nationality, formal membership in a nation, differ from the domestic relationship of rights and obligations between a national and the nation, known as citizenship. Nauruan nationality is typically obtained either on the principle of jus soli, i.e. by birth in the Nauru or under the rules of jus sanguinis, i.e. by birth to parents with Nauruan nationality. Naturalization is only available to those with some connection to the country, such as the spouse of a citizen; no amount of time living in Nauru will, by itself, make one eligible for naturalization.
The economy of Banaba and Nauru has been almost wholly dependent on phosphate, which has led to environmental disaster on these islands, with 80% of the islands’ surface having been strip-mined. The phosphate deposits were virtually exhausted by 2000, although some small-scale mining is still in progress on Nauru. Mining ended on Banaba in 1979.
The Japanese occupation of Nauru was the period of three years during which Nauru, a Pacific island which at that time was under Australian administration, was occupied by the Japanese military as part of its operations in the Pacific War during World War II. With the onset of the war, the islands that flanked Japan's South Seas possessions became of vital concern to Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, and in particular to the Imperial Navy, which was tasked with protecting Japan's outlying Pacific territories.
Hernsheim & Co. was a German trading company in the Western Pacific Ocean with main offices on Yap in the Caroline Islands, Jaluit in the Marshall Islands and Matupi in the Bismarck Archipelago. Hernsheim & Co. mainly specialized in the copra export to Europe. After the loss of their Pacific possessions in the aftermath of World War I, the company attempted a new beginning in the French Mandate of Cameroon in Africa. In the heyday of their ”South Sea” business, Hernsheim & Co. exported almost 30% of the copra produced in the Western Pacific Ocean. Many of their agents were also dealers in ethnographic objects.
The Japanese occupation of the Gilbert Islands was the period in the history of Kiribati between 1941 and 1945 when Imperial Japanese forces occupied the Gilbert Islands during World War II, in the Pacific War theatre.
