Bismarck Archipelago
| Bismarck Archipelago | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Waters | Pacific Ocean | |
| Geographical location | 4 ° 0 ′ S , 149 ° 45 ′ E | |
|
||
| Number of islands | 200 | |
| Main island | New Britain | |
| Total land area | 49,658 km² | |
| Residents | 472.163 | |
The Bismarck Archipelago (until 1884: New Britain Archipelago or New Britain Archipelago ) is located in the western Pacific and belongs to Papua New Guinea .
geography
The archipelago consists of more than 200 islands culturally assigned to Melanesia . The total area is 49,658 km². The main islands of the archipelago are:
|
 East New Britain Province
|
15,320 km² |
| New Britain (between 1885 and 1918: New Pomerania), main island with the Gazelle Peninsula bordering to the northeast | ||
| Duke of York Islands (between 1885 and 1918: Neu-Lauenburg) | ||
|
 Manus Province
|
2,102 km² |
| Manus , main island | ||
| Admiralty Islands with Baluan , Purdy Islands , Rambutyo | ||
| Western Islands region : u. a. Hermit Islands , Wuvulu | ||
|
 New Ireland Province
|
9,600 km² |
| New Ireland (between 1885 and 1918: New Mecklenburg), main island | ||
| Lavongai (formerly also New Hanover or New Hanover) | ||
| Feni Islands | ||
| Lihir Islands | ||
| St. Matthias Islands | ||
| Tabar Islands | ||
| Tanga Islands | ||
|
 West New Britain Province
|
20,487 km² |
| Vitu Islands |
Topography and fauna
The archipelago extends between 2 ° and 6 ° 30 ′ south latitude and 148 ° and 155 ° east longitude. It covers a total area of approx. 49,500 km². The land masses are partly volcanic, partly corallogenic in origin and have elevations of up to 1200 meters. The main islands lie in a semicircle in northeast New Guinea , from which they are separated by the approximately 90 kilometers wide Dampier Strait . Between New Britain and New Ireland runs the St. George Canal from southeast to northwest , at the exit of which the Bismarck Sea borders to the west.
The fauna is related to that of New Guinea . In addition, there are the Bismarck ring python ( Bothrochilus boa ) and the Finsch fruit pigeon , which are only found in the Bismarck archipelago.
history
European discovery and early contacts
On the European side, islands of the archipelago were already sighted in 1616 by the Dutch navigators Jakob Le Maire and Willem Schouten . The current names "New Britain", "New Ireland", "New Hanover" and "Duke of York Islands" go back to a later visit by the English privateer and explorer William Dampier with HMS Roebuck around 1700.
In the middle of 1791 the British captain John Hunter drove to the Duke of York group with the Dutch Waaksamheyd . He measured the natural harbor in the far north. In the following decade, the so-called "Hunter Harbor" was visited more frequently by whaling ships from the United States and Hawaii. In order to get provisions, they bartered with the locals. From 1830 onwards, such business also took place off other coasts along the St. George Canal. By 1870 at the latest, there was a first settled European in the Hunterhafen who represented the indigenous upper class in barter deals. Such developments were also driven by a group of deserters from Sydney (New South Wales prison colony, Australia), who settled on the south-western tip of New Ireland around 1840 and also sold natural products to passing ships.
In the second half of 1875, the English Reverend George Brown founded a first missionary station on Duke of York Island. From there he and a group of mission teachers from Fiji and Tonga initiated the Christianization of the Gazelle Peninsula . At about the same time, the later Hamburg merchant Eduard Hernsheim set up a branch in the Hunterhafen. Hernsheim's agent J. T. Blohm then opened the outpatient swap business on the northern beaches of the Gazelle Peninsula and in Blanche Bay to the southeast. Already in April 1873 the trading house Joh. Ces. Godeffroy & Sohn tried to establish stationary trade relations with the locals in both areas, but this failed.
In the early 1880s, the company Hernsheim & Co established itself as the most important representative of European trade with main branches in Blanche Bay ( Matupi ) and New Ireland (Nusa and Kapsu), as well as the successor to Joh. Ces. Godeffroy & Sohn founded the German trading and plantation company of the South Sea Islands in Hamburg ( DHPG ) on the Duke of York Group ("Mioko Agency") and the northern Gazelle Peninsula (Weberhafen station). From 1882/83 the DHPG also used the archipelago for the forced recruitment of workers for their plantations on Samoa . Also represented was the Australian-New Zealand company Farrell & Co (from 1888/89 EE Forsayth ), which had been systematically building plantations in the Birara district (Gazelle Peninsula) since November 1882.
German protected area
After the ports of Mioko and Makada (Duke of York Islands) were "acquired" by Corvette Captain Bartholomäus von Werner in December 1878, the New Britain archipelago formed the starting point for the German Empire to take possession of the later Kaiser-Wilhelm-Land . With the flag being raised on Matupi and Mioko on November 3rd and 4th, 1884, the archipelago was declared a German protected area. At the suggestion of Inspector Gustav von Oertzen , the name was changed to "Bismarck Archipelago" in September 1885. From an administrative point of view, the archipelago initially formed the “eastern jurisdiction district” of the protected area of the New Guinea Company , to which sovereign rights and administrative tasks had been transferred. Because of the problematic development of the protected area, the administration was carried out on a trial basis by Reich officials between May 1889 and September 1892, while the sovereign rights remained with the New Guinea Company. In April 1895 administration and sovereign rights were permanently transferred to the German Reich. The administrative headquarters since the occupation were, partly simultaneously, the islands of Kerawara (1886–1890) and Matupi (1886–87, 1888–89). In 1890 Herbertshöhe became the final administrative seat, also after the incorporation of the Bismarck Archipelago into the imperial protected area of German New Guinea in 1899.
First World War
During the First World War, the few Germans in the Bismarck Archipelago offered only brief resistance. In contrast to the larger African colonies in Germany, there was no protective force in the South Seas , only a local Melanesian police force . The climax of the fighting was the occupation of the Bita Paka radio station near Rabaul by Australian units in September 1914. The German occupation surrendered on September 17, 1914 to an Australian - French fleet. Herbertshöhe was handed over on September 21, 1914 .
Second World War
Since 1946 the archipelago was administered together with Eastern New Guinea in trust territory of the UN and on their behalf by Australia, since 1949 as the common territory of Papua and New Guinea mandate area. In December 1973, Papua New Guinea gained autonomy.
population
In 1899 the Melanesian population of the archipelago was estimated at 180,000–200,000. Today around 470,000 people live in the area.
Trade and economy
The customary currency around 1900 was still diwarra , the shell money . The natural products copra , cotton , trepang , mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell were exported . The value was around 700,000 marks in 1896/97 .
literature
swell
- George Brown: Pioneer-Missionary and Explorer: a narrative of forty-eight years' residence and travel in Samoa, New Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands . Hodder & Stoughton, London 1908
-
Small German Colonial Atlas . 3rd edition, edited by Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft , Dietrich Reimer Verlag (Ernst Vohsen), Berlin 1899, with comments on the maps (description of the colonial areas)
- Reprint Weltbild , Augsburg 2002 ISBN 3-8289-0526-9
- Richard Parkinson: Thirty Years in the South Seas: Country and people, customs and traditions in the Bismarck Archipelago and on the German Solomon Islands . Strecker & Schröder, Stuttgart 1907
- ders .: In the Bismarck Archipelago: Experiences and observations on the island of New Pomerania (New Britain) . Brockhaus, Leipzig 1887
- Wilfred Powell: Wanderings in a Wild Country; or, three years amongst the cannibals of New Britain . Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, London 1883
- Carl Ribbe: Under the southern cross: travel pictures from Melanesia . German book workshops, Dresden 1924
Secondary works
- Jakob Anderhandt: Eduard Hernsheim, the South Seas and a lot of money : biography in two volumes. MV Science, Münster 2012.
- Stewart Firth: German Recruitment and Employment of Laborers in the Western Pacific before the First World War . [Microfilm.] University of Sydney [1973].
- German Colonial Lexicon . Volume 1. 1920, p. 213 ff.
- Karlheinz Graudenz, Hanns-Michael Schindler: The German colonies . Weltbildverlag, Augsburg 1994, ISBN 3-89350-701-9 .
- Alastair C. Gray: "Trading Contacts in the Bismarck Archipelago during the Whaling Era, 1799-1884". Journal of Pacific History , 34, 23-43 (1999).
- Liane Werner: History of the German colonial area in Melanesia . (Thesis, filmed and published by the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Canberra, PMB 514). [Humboldt University, Berlin 1965.]
- Arthur Wichmann: Nova Guinea: Vol. II. History of the discovery of New Guinea 1828–1885 . Bookstore and printer EJ Brill, Leiden 1910.
Web links
- Via the Provincial Tourist Office of Papua New Guinea
- Historical map (1891)
Individual evidence
- ^ Bismarck Archipelago . In: Microsoft Encarta online .
- ↑ Cf. the evaluation of surviving logbooks of American whalers in Alastair C. Gray: "Trading Contacts in the Bismarck Archipelago during the Whaling Era, 1799-1884". In: Journal of Pacific History , 34, 23-43 (1999).
- ↑ George Brown: Pioneer-Missionary and Explorer: a narrative of forty-eight years' residence and travel in Samoa, New Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands . London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908, p. 97.
- ^ Clive Moore: New Guinea: Crossing Boundaries and History . University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 2003, p. 160 (passim).
- ↑ See George Brown: Pioneer-Missionary and Explorer: a narrative of forty-eight years' residence and travel in Samoa, New Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands . London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908, which provides an autobiographical report on this.
- ↑ Jakob Anderhandt: Eduard Hernsheim, the South Seas and a lot of money : biography in two volumes. MV-Wissenschaft, Münster 2012, Vol. 1, pp. 144–46.
- ↑ Cf. Richard Parkinson: Thirty Years in the South Seas: Land and people, customs and traditions in the Bismarck Archipelago and on the German Solomon Islands . Strecker & Schröder, Stuttgart 1907, p. 850, and Jakob Anderhandt: Eduard Hernsheim, the South Seas and a lot of money : biography in two volumes. MV-Wissenschaft, Münster 2012, vol. 1, p. 135 f.
- ↑ See Stewart Firth: German Recruitment and Employment of Laborers in the Western Pacific before the First World War . [Microfilm.] University of Sydney, Sydney [1973], p. 24 ff.
- ↑ Horst founder: History of the German Colonies (6th, revised and expanded edition), Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, p. 102.
- ↑ Matupi was the residence and office of the judge for the Bismarck Archipelago during the specified periods, cf. Jakob Anderhandt: Eduard Hernsheim, the South Seas and a lot of money : biography in two volumes. MV-Wissenschaft, Münster 2012, vol. 2, p. 348, 353, 355 and p. 549, note no.172.
- ↑ Reinhard Klein-Arendt: “Kamina ruft Nauen!” The radio stations in the German colonies 1904–1918. Wilhelm Herbst, Cologne 1995 ISBN 3-923925-58-1
- ↑ Battle of Bita Paka (Eng.)
- ^ Population of Bismarck Archipelago . Wolfram Alpha