PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
June 2014
495
“T
he Solomon Islands were initially
settled by at least 2000
BC
—well before
the archaeological record begins—
probably by people of the
Pottery of the
was in use in
Santa Cruz and the Reef Islands about 1500
BC
.
Material dating to about 1000
BC
has also been
excavated at Vatuluma Cave (Guadalcanal), on
Santa Ana Island, and on the outlying islands of
Anuta and Tikopia.
“The first European to reach the islands was the Spanish
explorer
in 1568. Subsequently,
unjustified rumors led to the belief that he had not only
found gold there but had also discovered where the biblical
king
obtained the gold for his temple in Jerusalem.
The islands thus acquired the name Islas de Solomón.
Later Spanish expeditions to the southwest Pacific in 1595
and 1606 were unable to confirm the discoveries reported
by Mendaña. Geographers came to doubt the existence of
the group, and it was not until the late 18
th
century, after
further sightings by French and English navigators, that
the Solomons were accurately charted. After the settlement
of Sydney by the
in 1788, naval and commercial
shipping began increasingly to pass through the Solomons’
waters.
“Roman Catholic
failed to establish a
settlement in the 1840s but did so in 1898. Anglican
missionaries, who had been taking islanders to New Zealand
for training since the 1850s, began to settle in the Solomons
in the 1870s. Other missions arrived later.
“By the late 19
th
century the islands were being exploited
for
to work the plantations of Fiji and other islands
and of
Australia. About 30,000 laborers were
recruited between 1870 and 1910. To protect their own
interests,
and Britain divided the Solomons
between them in 1886; but in 1899 Germany transferred
the northern islands, except for
and
to
Britain (which had already claimed the southern islands) in
return for recognition of German claims in Western
(now
and parts of Africa. The British Solomon
Islands Protectorate was declared in 1893, partly in response
to abuses associated with labor recruitment and partly to
regulate contacts between islanders and
settlers,
but mainly to forestall a threat of annexation by France.
rule began in 1896. Although generally humane,
administrators were more concerned with promoting the
interests of European traders and planters than those of the
islanders, and islanders were punished harshly for offenses
against colonial law and order. The murder of government tax
collectors by members of the Kwaio ethnic group on
in 1927 was answered with a savage punitive expedition,
backed by an Australian warship, that burned and looted
villages and killed many of the Kwaio. Together with some
of his associates, Basiana, the leader of the tax collectors’
killers, was hanged, and his young sons were forced to
witness the execution.
“With the outbreak of
in the Pacific, the
Japanese began occupying the protectorate early in 1942, but
their advance farther southward was stopped by U.S. forces,
which invaded on August 7. Fighting in the Solomons over
the next 15 months was some of the most bitter in the Pacific;
the lon
was one of the crucial conflicts
of the Pacific war. Throughout the campaign the U.S. forces
and their allies were strongly supported by the islanders.
After the war, because of the proximity of an airfield and
the availability of flat land and of the military’s buildings,
on Guadalcanal became the new capital, replacing
Tulagi.
“Another result of the war was to stimulate political
consciousness among the islanders and so inspire a nationalist
