Payback

Melanesia has now experienced over a century of far-reaching intrusions by peoples from the outside world. The first Melanesian region made subject to a colonial power was west New Guinea (or west Papua), when in 1848, a fateful year of European turmoil, it fell under the very superficial control of the Netherlands to the 141st meridian east longitude. By 1853 Louis Napoleon had declared New Caledonia a French possession and was interested in its suitability for a penal settlement. Thirty years later, partly from fear of others' imperial pretensions in the region, the Queensland parliament had the temerity to annex land that subsequently became known as British New Guinea (and, later on, the Australian Territory of Papua). Not to be outdone by rivals, the German government backed the establishment of a trading company in the region (from 1885), although Kaiser Wilhelmsland, the Bismarck Archipelago, and parts of the Western Solomons eventually fell into Australian hands on the eve of the First World War (1914), later becoming the Territory of New Guinea. To the east the British had reluctantly taken over Fiji by 1874 and the Solomon Islands (except for islands west of Isabel) by 1893. A curious sharing of the spoils between France and the United Kingdom resulted in a condominium over the New Hebrides in 1906; while to the west of the whole region Dutch colonial government over the East Indies and, thus, over west New Guinea was formalized in 1898.