The Dutch Empire of the East Indies had been founded as early as the Seventeenth Century.
New Guinea was added in 1828. East Indies were exploited ruthlessly for the economic advantage of Holland.
French established themselves in Tahiti in 1843 and in 1853 annexed New Caledonia.France also occupied the Marquesas, the Society Islands and other small groups adjoining Tahiti.
To Germany, the impulse to expand in the Pacific came 1884.In 1884, the Germans took North-Eastern New Guinea.
The German also secured Offshore Islands which they named after Bismarck and within two years the neighboring Solomon Islands and the Marshall group Islands.
In World War I, the Empire of Japan occupied the Marshall Islands
During World War II, the United States conquered the Islands in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign in 1944.
A sad legacy of World War II is the nuclear weapons testing that occurred in the Marshall Islands starting in 1946.
Whole Atolls were destroyed or made uninhabitable, populations moved away from their ancestral homelands, and ways of life were changed as the people were involuntarily exposed to radiation.
In 1874, the British annexed the Fiji Islands. In 1888, Britain set up a protectorate over North Borneo.
By the end of the century, Britain also took the South Solomon, Tonga and Gilbert Islands.
After her war with Spain, the United States annexed Puerto Rico and set up a protectorate over Cuba in the Caribbean Sea and also took the Philippines and the Hawaiian Islands.
After the defeat of Spain in 1899, the United States divided Samoa with Germany and Britain.
The Philippines was put under direct American control. The USA also annexed Guam.
In 1899, Hawaii was annexed by the United States. The rest of the Marianas and the Caroline Islands were sold by Spain to Germany.