Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea The eastern half of the island of New Guinea. The area was divided between British and German administration in 1884, but British rule was transferred to Australia. Its Lieutenant-Governor, Murray, embarked upon a relatively enlightened native policy, in marked contrast to the Germans in the north. In 1920 the territory was united as a League of Nations Mandate under Australian administration. World War II was an especially traumatic experience for the island, as 1.5 million Allied troops and 300,000 Japanese soldiers passed through an area previously accommodating fewer than 5,000 White settlers. While one-third of Papua New Guineans in the hinterlands remained completely untouched by these events, along the more accessible valleys and coast Papuans were deeply involved in the war effort, while many settlements and buildings were destroyed. After the war, it came once again under Australian administration as a UN trust territory, but this time the Australians provided considerable grants to develop the education and health systems. In 1964 a House of Assembly was created, in which Papua New Guineans had political control for the first time in their history. Self-government was granted in 1973, and independence on 16 September 1975. The country has been characterized by its extreme social heterogeneity, as it contains around 1,000 different peoples, speaking over 600 different languages (not counting dialects). Its economy continued to be dominated by Australian capital: Australian government grants still provided around 20 per cent of state income in 1990. In 1989 a civil war erupted on the Island of Bougainville, as the Bougainville Revolutionary Army strove for independence. The war cost the lives of over 10,000 people, and was not resolved until 2001, when the island was granted far-reaching autonomy with a view to independence about ten years later.