Editing Micronesia (section)

==History==
{{see also|History of the Federated States of Micronesia|History of the Marshall Islands}}

===Prehistory{{anchor|Pre-history}}===
{{Further|Austronesian peoples}}

[[File:Chronological dispersal of Austronesian people across the Pacific.svg|thumb|upright=2|Chronological dispersal of [[Austronesian peoples]] across the [[Indo-Pacific]]<ref name="Chambers2013">{{cite journal |last1=Chambers |first1=Geoff |journal =eLS | title = Genetics and the Origins of the Polynesians |publisher= John Wiley & Sons, Inc.|date=15 January 2013 |doi=10.1002/9780470015902.a0020808.pub2|isbn=978-0470016176 }}</ref>]]

The [[Northern Mariana Islands]] were the first islands in [[Oceania]] colonized by the [[Austronesian peoples]]. They were settled by the voyagers who sailed eastwards from the [[Philippines]] in approximately 1500 BCE. These populations gradually moved southwards until they reached the [[Bismarck Archipelago]] and the [[Solomon Islands]] by 1300 BCE and reconnected with the [[Lapita culture]] of the southeast migration branch of Austronesians moving through coastal [[New Guinea]] and [[Island Melanesia]]. By 1200 BCE, they again began crossing open seas beyond inter-island visibility, reaching [[Vanuatu]], [[Fiji]], and [[New Caledonia]]; before continuing eastwards to become the ancestors of the [[Polynesian people]].<ref name="Chambers2013"/><ref name="wilson2018">{{cite book|first1=Meredith|last1=Wilson|first2=Chris|last2=Ballard|editor1-first=Bruno |editor1-last=David|editor2-first= Ian J.|editor2-last= McNiven|title =The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art|chapter=Rock Art of the Pacific: Context and Intertextuality|publisher =Oxford University Press|year =2018|pages=221–252|isbn = 9780190844950|chapter-url =https://books.google.com/books?id=tXFyDwAAQBAJ&pg=PP1}}</ref><ref name="Bellwood2011">{{cite journal |last1=Bellwood |first1=Peter |title=The Checkered Prehistory of Rice Movement Southwards as a Domesticated Cereal—from the Yangzi to the Equator |journal=Rice |date=9 December 2011 |volume=4 |issue=3–4 |pages=93–103 |doi=10.1007/s12284-011-9068-9 |s2cid=44675525 |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/81529950.pdf|doi-access=free |bibcode=2011Rice....4...93B }}</ref>

Further migrations by other Austronesians also followed, likely from [[Sulawesi]], settling [[Palau]] and [[Yap]] by around 1000 BCE. The details of this colonization, however, are not very well known.<ref name="Chambers2013"/><ref name="wilson2018"/>{{sfn|Morgan|1988|p=30}} In 200 BCE, a loosely connected group of Lapita colonists from [[Island Melanesia]] also migrated back northwards, settling the islands of eastern Micronesia almost simultaneously. This region became the center of another wave of migrations radiating outwards, reconnecting them with other settled islands in western Micronesia.<ref name="Chambers2013"/><ref name="wilson2018"/>

Around 800 CE, a second wave of migrants from Southeast Asia arrived in the Marianas, beginning what is now known as the [[Latte period]]. These new settlers built large structures with distinctive capped stone pillars known as ''haligi''. They also reintroduced [[rice]] (which did not survive earlier voyages), making the Northern Marianas the only islands in [[Oceania]] where rice was grown prior to European contact. However, it was considered a high-status crop and only used in rituals. It did not become a staple until after [[Spanish East Indies|Spanish colonization]].<ref name="Bellwood2011"/><ref name="Carson2012">{{cite journal |last1=Carson |first1=Mike T. |title=An overview of ''latte'' period archaeology |journal=Micronesica |date=2012 |volume=42 |issue=1/2 |pages=1–79 |url=https://micronesica.org/sites/default/files/1_carson1-79sm.pdf}}</ref><ref name="Peterson2012">{{cite journal |last1=Peterson |first1=John A. |title=Latte villages in Guam and the Marianas: Monumentality or monumenterity? |journal=Micronesica |date=2012 |volume=42 |issue=1/2 |pages=183–08 |url=https://micronesica.org/sites/default/files/5_smpeterson_pp183-208.pdf}}</ref>

Construction of [[Nan Madol]], a [[megalith]]ic complex made from [[Columnar basalt|basalt lava logs]] in Pohnpei, began in around 1180 CE. This was followed by the construction of the [[Leluh archaeological site|Leluh complex]] in [[Kosrae]] in around 1200.<ref name="wilson2018"/><ref name="Richards2015">{{cite journal |last1=Richards |first1=Zoe T. |last2=Shen |first2=Chuan-Chou |last3=Hobbs |first3=Jean-Paul A. |last4=Wu |first4=Chung-Che |last5=Jiang |first5=Xiuyang |last6=Beardsley |first6=Felicia |title=New precise dates for the ancient and sacred coral pyramidal tombs of Leluh (Kosrae, Micronesia) |journal=Science Advances |date=March 2015 |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=e1400060 |doi=10.1126/sciadv.1400060|pmid=26601144 |pmc=4643814 |bibcode=2015SciA....1E0060R }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Rainbird |first1=Paul |last2=Wilson |first2=Meredith |title=Crossing the line: the enveloped cross in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia |journal=Antiquity |date=2 January 2015 |volume=76 |issue=293 |pages=635–636 |doi=10.1017/S0003598X00091018|s2cid=161654405 }}</ref>

<gallery>
File:Map FM-Nan Madol.PNG|Central Nan Madol (map)
File:Nan Madol 5.jpg|[[Nan Madol]]
File:Lelu Ruins, Kosrae, Micronesia.jpg|[[Leluh archaeological site|Leluh]]
File:Latte stones in Hagatna.jpg|[[Latte stone]]s
File:Yap Stone Money.jpg|[[Rai stone]]
</gallery>

===Early European contact===
[[File:Reception of the Manila Galleon by the Chamorro in the Ladrones Islands, ca. 1590.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|[[Manila galleon|Manila Galleon]] in the [[Mariana Islands|Marianas]] and [[Caroline Islands|Carolinas]], c. 1590 [[Boxer Codex]]]]
The earliest known contact with Europeans occurred in 1521, when a Spanish expedition under [[Ferdinand Magellan]] reached the Marianas.<ref>{{Cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=8V3vZxOmHssC&q=ferdinand+magellan+mariana+islands&pg=PA379 |title = The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History |isbn = 9781851099511 |last1 = Tucker |first1 = Spencer |year = 2009 | publisher = ABC CLIO | location = Santa Barbara, California}}</ref> This contact is recorded in [[Antonio Pigafetta]]'s chronicle of Magellan's voyage, in which he recounts that the Chamorro people had no apparent knowledge of people outside of their island group.<ref>{{cite book | editor-last = Levesque | editor-first =  Rodrigue | year = 1992–1997 | title = History of Micronesia: A collection of source documents, Vols. 1–20 | location = Quebec, Canada | publisher = Levesque Publications | pages = 249, 251}}</ref> A Portuguese account of the same voyage suggests that the Chamorro people who greeted the travellers did so "without any shyness as if they were good acquaintances".{{sfn|Rainbird|2004|p=13-14}}

Further contact was made during the sixteenth century, although often initial encounters were very brief. Documents relating to the 1525 voyage of [[Diogo da Rocha]] suggest that he made the first European contact with inhabitants of the Caroline Islands, possibly staying on the [[Ulithi]] atoll for four months and encountering [[Yap]]. Marshall Islanders were encountered by the expedition of Spanish navigator [[Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón]] in 1529.<ref>{{Cite report|first1=Kenneth O.|last1=Emery|first2=J I.|last2=Tracey|first3=H. S.|last3=Ladd|title=Geology of Bikini and Nearby Atolls|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CegqAQAAIAAJ&q=%C3%81lvaro+de+Saavedra+marshall+islands&pg=PA3|series=Geological Survey Professional Papers|volume=260|number=1|page=3|year=1954}}</ref> Other contact with the Yap islands occurred in 1625.{{sfn|Rainbird|2004|p=14}}

===Colonisation and conversion===
[[File:HH1883 pg123 Hafen von Jaluit, Marshall-Inseln.jpg|thumb|German trading station at [[Jaluit Atoll]] with a Marshallese ''[[Walap|korkor]]'' outrigger canoe in the foreground]]
In the early 17th century [[Spain]] colonized [[Guam]], the [[Northern Marianas]] and the [[Caroline Islands]] (what would later become the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau), creating the [[Spanish East Indies]], which was governed from the [[Spanish Philippines]].

When Russian explorer [[Otto von Kotzebue]] visited the [[Marshall Islands]] in 1817, he noted that Marshallese families practiced [[infanticide]] after the birth of a third child as a form of population planning due to frequent [[famine]]s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hezel |first=Francis X. |date=1983 |title=The First Taint of Civilization: A History of the Caroline and Marshall Islands in Pre-colonial Days, 1521–1885 |series=Pacific Islands Monograph Series |location=Honolulu |publisher=University of Hawaii Press |pages=92–94 |isbn=9780824816438}}</ref> 

In 1819, the [[American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions]]—a Protestant group—brought their Puritan ways to Polynesia. Soon after, the Hawaiian Missionary Society was founded and sent missionaries into Micronesia. Conversion was not met with as much opposition, as the local religions were less developed (at least according to Western ethnographic accounts). In contrast, it took until the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th centuries for missionaries to fully convert the inhabitants of Melanesia; however, a comparison of the cultural contrast must take into account the fact that Melanesia has always had deadly strains of [[malaria]] present in various degrees and distributions throughout its history (see [[De Rays Expedition]]) and up to the present; conversely, Micronesia does not have—and never seems to have had—any malarial mosquitos nor pathogens on any of its islands in the past.<ref>{{cite book|last=Ridgell|first=Reilly|title=Pacific Nations and Territories: The Islands of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polonesia|page=43|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p3liL6fAjrcC&q=%22micronesia%22 | edition = Third, Revised | publisher = Bess Press | location = Honolulu, Hawai'i |isbn=9781573060011|year=1995}}</ref>

===German–Spanish Treaty of 1899===
{{main|German–Spanish Treaty (1899)}}
[[File:German new guinea 1888 1899.png|thumb|[[German New Guinea]] before and after the German-Spanish treaty of 1899]]
In the [[Spanish–American War]], Spain lost many of its remaining colonies. In the Pacific, the United States took possession of the [[Spanish Philippines]] and Guam. On 17 January 1899, the United States also took possession of unclaimed and uninhabited Wake Island. This left Spain with the remainder of the Spanish East Indies, about 6,000 tiny islands that were sparsely populated and not very productive. These islands were ungovernable after the loss of the administrative center of Manila and indefensible after the loss of two Spanish fleets in the war. The Spanish government therefore decided to sell the remaining islands to a new colonial power: the [[German Empire]].

The treaty, which was signed by Spanish Prime Minister [[Francisco Silvela]] on 12 February 1899, transferred the Caroline Islands (Kosrae in the east to Palau in the west), the Mariana Islands, and other possessions to Germany. Under German control, the islands became a protectorate and were administered from [[German New Guinea]]. Nauru had already been annexed and claimed as a colony by Germany in 1888.

===20th century===
[[File:MapofTTPI.gif|thumb|Map from 1961 of the US [[Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands]], formerly Japan's [[South Seas Mandate]].]]
In the early 20th century, the islands of Micronesia were divided between three foreign powers:
* the [[United States]], which took control of Guam following the Spanish–American War of 1898 and claimed [[Wake Island]];
* [[German Empire|Germany]], which took Nauru and bought the Marshall, Caroline and Northern Mariana Islands from Spain; and
* the [[British Empire]], which took the [[Gilbert Islands]] (Kiribati).

During [[World War I]], Germany's Pacific island territories were seized and became [[League of Nations mandate]]s in 1923. Nauru became an [[Australia]]n mandate, while Germany's other territories in Micronesia were given as a mandate to [[Japan]] and were named the [[South Seas Mandate]]. During [[World War&nbsp;II]], Nauru and [[Banaba|Ocean Island]] were occupied by [[Empire of Japan|Japanese]] troops, with also an [[Japanese occupation of the Gilbert Islands|occupation of some of the Gilbert Islands]] and were bypassed by the Allied advance across the Pacific. Following Japan's defeat in [[World War II]] its mandate became a [[United Nations Trusteeship]] administered by the United States as the [[Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Pelzer|first=Karl J.|date=1950|title=Micronesia—A Changing Frontier|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/world-politics/article/abs/micronesiaa-changing-frontier/7EB3E45CAA8069039DF2A73A5E630382|journal=World Politics|language=en|volume=2|issue=2|pages=251–266|doi=10.2307/2009190|jstor=2009190|s2cid=154463511 |issn=1086-3338|url-access=subscription}}</ref> Nauru became independent in 1968.

===21st century===
Today, most of Micronesia are independent states, except for the [[Commonwealth (U.S. insular area)|U.S. Commonwealth of the]] [[Northern Mariana Islands]], [[Guam]] and [[Wake Island]], which are U.S. territories.