Colonial partition of the Coral Sea
Colonial partition of the Coral Sea began with the British colonies in Australia, followed by the French takeover of New Caledonia in 1853. Queensland separated from New South Wales in 1859 (and became part of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901).
Local chiefs ceded Fiji to Britain in 1874, and it remained in British hands until 1970. Eastern New Guinea was divided between Germany and Britain in 1884, and then German New Guinea passed to the League of Nations as a Mandated Territory and into Australian hands in 1921, administered along with Australia Papua (the former British New Guinea) from 1906, until 1975. The Solomon Islands were proclaimed a British Protectorate in 1893, gaining independence in 1978. The New Hebrides was the oddest of all: from 1888 there was a joint British—French naval administration, replaced in 1906 by an uneasy condominium arrangement between the two European powers which lasted until 1980.The New Guinea and Melanesian colonies, however, were not rich imperial pickings, although New Guinea developed significant gold mines and New Caledonia provided large exports of nickel. The economies of most territories remained based on subsistence agriculture, with male labourers as indentured and wage labourers in copra and sugar production. Some of the territories saw significant introductions of European settlers and Asian labourers who irrevocably altered the dominance of the indigenous inhabitants.
More on the topic Colonial partition of the Coral Sea:
- The Australian colonies and the Coral Sea
- Discovering the Red Sea
- Partition and the end of the mandate