Colonization of the Pacific Islands

The Colonization of the Pacific Islands was a series of conquests of indigenous nations in the South Pacific by European, American and Imperial Japanese colonial powers. The colonization of said islands resulted in the cultural destruction and population reduction of several Polynesian communities, which were often the result of blackbirding. Tonga remained the only Pacific nation to never be colonized, although it did become a British protectorate until 1970. The Pacific islands, along with Australia and New Zealand, make up the least decolonized region in the world today.

List of Atrocities

United Kingdom

In the aftermath of the American Civil War and during the time of the Fijian monarchy, settlers from the United States and Australia began colonizing Fiji to establish plantations, where they enslaved thousands of blackbirded natives. Although the British government did try to mitigate the brutality suffered by the slaves, this only made things worse for the islanders. Eventually, the British annexed Fiji in 1874 and overthrew King Seru Epenisa Cakobau, which led to disease-related mortalities among the indigenous population and conflicts between the natives and settlers.

France

After the French annexed the Marquesas Islands and made Tahiti a protectorate in 1842, a series of incursions between the French and Tahitians took place, leading to the Franco-Tahitian War and the exile of Queen Pōmare. The French won the war and signed a treaty with the Tahitians after being pressured by the British to not annex Tahiti. However, the French broke the treaty and annexed Tahiti in the 1880s. The French would later annex the neighboring kingdoms in the Leeward Islands.

In 1853, the French annexed the island of New Caledonia and established a penal colony for convicts eleven years later, while also systematically confining the indigenous Kanak people into reservations. This would lead to a series of wars against the French, which would ultimately lead to thousands of native casualties in addition to foreign diseases brought by the settlers.

United States

In 1893, a party of American missionaries orchestrated a coup against Queen Liliʻuokalani and overthrew the monarchy before establishing a republic under Sanford B. Dole the following year, despite Grover Cleveland's efforts to stop the overthrow. Four years later, the United States under the presidency of William McKinley would officially annex Hawaii and allow American settlers to establish sugarcane plantations on the newly-incorporated territory. Hawaii would later become a US state in 1959.

Imperial Japan

On the island of Guam, the indigenous Chamorro people were subjected to forced assimilation into Japanese culture and were incarcerated in concentration camps. It is estimated that 10% of the indigenous population perished as a result of Japanese colonization. Their oppression would continue until the end of World War II, when the Japanese were forced to flee Guam under threat from American invasion and the island became an incorporated US territory.