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  • 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.
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