Solomon Islands

Overview

The natural beauty of these islands may make the visitor neglect the fact that there were some particularly bloody battles here during World War II.

Unfortunately, there is an ongoing civil war which makes the Solomon Islands a destination only for travel that is absolutely necessary. This idyllic jungle will hopefully once more be the site of exploring visitors rather than gun battles.

History

Although little prehistory of the Solomon Islands is known material excavated on Santa Ana Guadalcanal and Gawa indicates that a hunter-gatherer people lived on the larger islands as early as 1000 B.C. Some Solomon Islanders are descendants of Neolithic Austronesian-speaking peoples who migrated somewhat later to the Pacific Islands from Southeast Asia.

The European discoverer of the Solomons was the Spanish explorer Alvaro de Mendana Y Neyra who set out from Peru in 1567 to seek the legendary Isles of Solomon. British mariner Philip Carteret entered Solomon waters in 1767. In the years that followed visits by explorers were more frequent.

Missionaries began visiting the Solomons in the mid-1800s. They made little progress at first however because "blackbirding"--the often brutal recruitment of laborers for the sugar plantations in Queensland and Fiji--led to a series of reprisals and massacres. The evils of the labor trade prompted the United Kingdom to declare a protectorate over the southern Solomons in 1893. In 1898 and 1899 more outlying islands were added to the protectorate; in 1900 the remainder of the archipelago an area previously under German jurisdiction was transferred to British administration. Under the protectorate missionaries settled in the Solomons converting most of the population to Christianity.

In the early 20th century several British and Australian firms began large-scale coconut planting. Economic growth was slow however and the islanders benefited little. With the outbreak of WWII most planters and traders were evacuated to Australia and most cultivation ceased.

From May 1942 when the Battle of the Coral Sea...more