Editing Micronesia (section)

===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>