The British flag being raised in 1883 after the Colony of Queensland annexed the southern part of New Guinea
In November 1882, Allgemeine Zeitung published an article calling for the German annexation of New Guinea. Concerned with such a prospect, Sir Thomas McIlwraith, the Premier of Queensland, cabled to London in February 1883, urging the government to annex New Guinea to Queensland, but received no answer. On 20 March, hearing the story that SMS Carola was about to leave Sydney for the South Seas "with object of annexation", he telegraphed Henry Chester, the police magistrate at Thursday Island, to sail for New Guinea and "take formal possession in Her Majesty’s name of whole of the Island with exception of that portion in occupation of the Dutch". Chester made the proclamation at Port Moresby on 4 April,[1][2] but the imperial British government disapproved of the annexation:[3] the British Colonial SecretaryLord Derby emphasised in a despatch to the Queensland government that such an action was beyond Queensland's constitutional powers as a British colony.[4][5][6]
On 6 November 1884, after the Australian colonies had promised financial support, the territory became a British protectorate. On 4 September 1888 the protectorate was annexed by Britain, together with some adjacent islands, which were collectively named British New Guinea.[7]
Australian acquisition and "interregnum" period
On 18 March 1902, the Territory was placed under the authority of the Commonwealth of Australia.[8] Resolutions of acceptance were passed by the Commonwealth Parliament, which accepted the territory under the name of Papua.[7] With the passage of the Papua Act 1905, the area was officially renamed the Territory of Papua, and Australian administration formally began in 1906.[9]
Early administration and World War I
Meanwhile, the northern part of New Guinea was under German commercial control from 1884, and from 1899 was directly ruled by the German government as the colony of German New Guinea, then known as Kaiser-Wilhelmsland. At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Australia invaded Kaiser-Wilhelmsland on 11 September 1914 with 2000 volunteers of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force. After several skirmishes, the Australians succeeded in capturing the German colony, which they occupied for the rest of the war. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 transferred German New Guinea to Australia, which administered it as the Territory of New Guinea.
Shortly after the start of the Pacific War, the island of New Guinea was invaded by the Japanese. Papua was the least affected region. Most of West Papua, at that time known as Dutch New Guinea, was occupied, as were large parts of the Territory of New Guinea (the former German New Guinea, which was also under Australian rule after World War I), but Papua was protected to a large extent by its southern location and the near-impassable Owen Stanley Ranges to the north. Civil administration was suspended during the war and both territories (Papua and New Guinea) were placed under martial law for the duration.[citation needed]
The New Guinea campaign opened with the battles for New Britain and New Ireland in the Territory of New Guinea in 1942. Rabaul, the capital of the Territory, was overwhelmed on 22–23 January and was established as a major Japanese base from where the Japanese landed on mainland New Guinea and advanced towards Port Moresby and Australia.[10] Having had their initial effort to capture Port Moresby by a seaborne invasion disrupted by the U.S. Navy and Australian navy in the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Japanese attempted a landward attack from the north via the Kokoda Track. From July 1942, a few Australian reserve battalions, many of them very young and untrained, fought a stubborn rearguard action against the Japanese attack, over the rugged Owen Stanley Ranges.[11] The militia, worn out and severely depleted by casualties, held out with the assistance of Papuan porters and medical assistants, and were relieved in late August by regular troops from the Second Australian Imperial Force, returning from action in the Mediterranean Theatre.
In early September 1942 Japanese marines attacked a strategic Royal Australian Air Force base at Milne Bay, near the eastern tip of Papua. They were beaten back by the Australian Army, and the Battle of Milne Bay was the first outright defeat of Japanese land forces in the Pacific theater during World War II.[12] The offensives in Papua and New Guinea of 1943–44 were the single largest series of connected operations ever mounted by the Australian armed forces.[13] The Supreme Commander of operations was the United States General Douglas Macarthur, with Australian General Thomas Blamey taking a direct role in planning, and operations being essentially directed by staff at New Guinea Force headquarters in Port Moresby.[13] Bitter fighting continued in New Guinea between the largely Australian force and the Japanese 18th Army based in New Guinea until the Japanese surrender in 1945.
Administrative unification with New Guinea
After the war, the Papua and New Guinea Act 1949 united the Territory of Papua and the Territory of New Guinea as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. However, for the purposes of Australian nationality a distinction was maintained between the two territories.[14] The act provided for a Legislative Council (which was established in 1951), a judicial system, a public service, and a system of local government.[15] Notwithstanding that it was part of an administrative union, the Territory of Papua at all times retained a distinct legal status and identity; it was a Possession of the Crown, whereas the Territory of New Guinea was initially a League of Nations mandate territory and subsequently a United Nations trust territory. This legal and political distinction remained until the advent of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea in 1975.
↑Whittaker, J. L.; Gash, N. G.; Hookey, J. F.; Lacey, R. J., eds. (1975). Documents and Readings in New Guinea History: Prehistory to 1889. Milton, Queensland: Jacaranda Press. p.445. ISBN0 7016 8176 4.
↑Whittaker, J. L.; Gash, N. G.; Hookey, J. L.; Lacey, R. J., eds. (1975). Documents and Readings in New Guinea History: Prehistory to 1889. Milton, Queensland: Jacaranda Press. pp.447–9. ISBN0 7016 8176 4.
12Commonwealth and Colonial Law by Kenneth Roberts-Wray, London, Stevens, 1966. P. 132
↑Commonwealth and Colonial Law by Kenneth Roberts-Wray, London, Stevens, 1966. P. 132 where it is noted that "On March 18, 1902 Letters Patent [S.R.O & S.I. Rev. II, 1096] made for the purposes of section 122 of the Australian Constitution, placed the territory under the Commonwealth of Australia"
Gibbney, H. J. (1966). "The Interregnum in the Government of Papua, 1901–1906". Australian Journal of Politics & History. 12 (3): 341–349. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8497.1966.tb00894.x.
Dispela Kantri Bilong Mi, Nau! Queensland Annexes New Guinea, by Paul Dillon, ISBN: 9780994638168, 2023; and
Queensland's contribution to the development of British New Guinea, by Paul Dillon, ISBN: 9781922815880, Connor Court Publishing, Brisbane 2023.
24Claimed in 1908; territory formed 1962; overlaps portions of Argentine and Chilean claims, borders not enforced but claim not renounced under the Antarctic Treaty.
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