Papua
New Guinea History
The eastern half of
the island of New Guinea - second largest in the world
- was divided between Germany (north) and the UK
(south) in 1885. The latter area was transferred to
Australia in 1902, which occupied the northern portion
during World War I and continued to administer the
combined areas until independence in 1975. A nine-year
secessionist revolt on the island of Bougainville
ended in 1997 after claiming some 20,000 lives.
Human remains have
been found which have been dated to about 50,000 years
ago. These ancient inhabitants probably had their
origins in Southeast Asia, themselves originating in
Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago. New Guinea was one of
the first landmasses after Africa and Eurasia to be
populated by modern humans, with the first migration at
approximately the same time as that of Australia.
Agriculture was
independently developed in the New Guinea highlands
around 7000 BC, making it one of the few areas of
original plant domestication in the world. A major
migration of Austronesian speaking peoples came to
coastal regions roughly 2,500 years ago, and this is
correlated with the introduction of pottery, pigs, and
certain fishing techniques. More recently, some 300
years ago, the sweet potato entered New Guinea having
been introduced to the Moluccas from South America by
the locally dominant colonial power, Portugal. The far
higher crop yields from sweet potato gardens radically
transformed traditional agriculture; sweet potato
largely supplanted the previous staple, taro, and gave
rise to a significant increase in population in the
highlands.
Although now
almost entirely eradicated, in the past headhunting and
cannibalism occurred in many parts of what is now Papua
New Guinea. By the early 1950s, through administration
and mission pressures, open cannibalism in Papua New
Guinea had almost entirely ceased.
Little was known
in the West about the island until the nineteenth
century, although traders from Southeast Asia had been
visiting New Guinea as long as 5,000 years ago
collecting bird of paradise plumes, and Spanish and
Portuguese explorers had encountered it as early as the
sixteenth century (1526 and 1527 Dom Jorge de Meneses).
The country's dual name results from its complex
administrative history before Independence. The word papua
is derived from pepuah, a Malay word describing
the frizzy Melanesian hair, and "New Guinea" (Nueva
Guinea) was the name coined by the Spanish explorer
Yñigo Ortiz de Retez, who in 1545 noted the resemblance
of the people to those he had earlier seen along the
Guinea coast of Africa. The northern half of the country
came into German hands in 1884 as German New Guinea.
During World War
I, it was occupied by Australia, which had begun
administering British New Guinea, the southern part, as
the re-named Papua in 1904. After World War I, Australia
was given a mandate to administer the former German New
Guinea by the League of Nations. Papua, by contrast, was
deemed to be an External Territory of the Australian
Commonwealth, though as a matter of law it remained a
British possession, an issue which had significance for
the country's post-Independence legal system after 1975.
This difference in legal status meant that Papua and New
Guinea had entirely separate administrations, both
controlled by Australia.
The New Guinea
campaign (1942–1945) was one of the major military
campaigns of World War II. Approximately 216,000
Japanese, Australian and American soldiers, sailors and
airmen died during the New Guinea Campaign. The two
territories were combined into the Territory of Papua
and New Guinea after World War II, which later was
simply referred to as "Papua New Guinea".
However, certain statutes continued to have application
only in one of the two territories, a matter
considerably complicated today by the adjustment of the
former boundary among contiguous provinces with respect
to road access and language groups, so that such
statutes apply on one side only of a boundary which no
longer exists.
The Administration
of Papua became open to United Nations oversight.
Peaceful independence from Australia occurred on
September 16, 1975, and close ties remain (Australia
remains the largest bilateral aid donor to Papua New
Guinea). Papua New Guinea was admitted to membership in
the United Nations on 10 October 1975.
A secessionist
revolt in 1975-76 on Bougainville Island resulted in an
eleventh-hour modification of the draft Constitution of
Papua New Guinea to allow for Bougainville and the other
eighteen districts of pre-Independence Papua New Guinea
to have quasi-federal status as provinces. The revolt
recurred and claimed 20,000 lives from 1988 until it was
resolved in 1997. Following the revolt, Autonomous
Bougainville elected Joseph Kabui as president, but he
was succeeded by deputy John Tabinaman. Tabinaman
remained leader until a new popular election occurred in
December 2008, with James Tanis emerging as the winner.
Anti-Chinese
rioting, involving tens of thousands of people,broke out
in May 2009. The initial spark for this was a fight
between Chinese and Papua New Guinean workers at a
nickel factory being built by a Chinese company, but
underlying the protests was a resentment against the
number of small businesses being run by Chinese.