European Explorers

When Europeans first arrived, inhabitants of New Guinea and nearby islands–while still relying on bone, wood, and stone tools–had a productive agricultural system. They traded along the coast, where products mainly were pottery, shell ornaments, and foodstuffs, and in the interior, where forest products were exchanged for shells and other sea products.

The first Europeans to sight New Guinea were probably the Portuguese and Spanish navigators sailing in the South Pacific in the early part of the 16th century. In 1526-27, Don Jorge de Meneses accidentally came upon the principal island and is credited with naming it Papua, a Malay word for the frizzled quality of Melanesian hair. The term New Guinea was applied to the island in 1545 by a Spaniard, Ynigo Ortis de Retez, because of a fancied resemblance between the islands’ inhabitants and those found on the African Guinea coast.

Although European navigators visited the islands and explored their coastlines for the next 170 years, little was known of the inhabitants until the late 19th century, when Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai spent several years living among native tribes and described their way of life in a comprehensive treatise.

German New Guinea

With Europe’s growing desire for coconut oil, Godeffroy’s of Hamburg, the largest trading firm in the Pacific, began trading for copra in the New Guinea Islands. In 1884, the German Empire formally took possession of the northeast quarter of the island and put its administration in the hands of a chartered trading company formed for the purpose, the Neu Guinea Kompagnie. In the charter granted to this company by the German Imperial Government in May of 1885, it was given the power to exercise sovereign rights over the territory and other “unoccupied” lands in the name of the government, and the ability to “negotiate” directly with the native inhabitants. Relationships with foreign powers were retained as the preserve of the German government. The Neu Guinea Kompagnie paid for the local governmental institutions directly, in return for the concessions which had been awarded to it.

In 1899, the German imperial government assumed direct control of the territory, thereafter known as German New Guinea. In 1914, Australian troops occupied German New Guinea, and it remained under Australian military control through World War I, until 1921. The British government, on behalf of the Commonwealth of Australia, assumed a mandate from the League of Nations for governing the Territory of New Guinea in 1920. It was administered under this mandate until the Japanese invasion in December 1941 brought about the suspension of Australian civil administration.