Papua New Guinean Independence
Papua New Guinea became independent on 16 September 1975, joining two territories that had been governed separately and contained more languages than any comparable place on earth. The southern half, Papua, was a British possession transferred to Australia in 1906. The northern half was German New Guinea, taken by Australian troops in 1914 and held afterwards as a mandate. Australia administered both, jointly after 1949, with a plantation economy, an indentured labour system and very little schooling. The interior highlands, holding perhaps a million people, were not known to outsiders until aerial survey and prospecting expeditions in the 1930s, so a large part of the population had about forty years between first contact and self-government. The country has over 800 living languages among some 12 million people today, and its politics runs on wantok obligation — loyalty to those who speak your language — rather than on national parties. Australia moved faster than it had planned. United Nations pressure through the 1960s, the Whitlam government's determination, and the emergence of a nationalist leadership around Michael Somare produced self-government in 1973 and independence two years later. Bougainville nearly seceded at the moment of independence and did revolt in 1988 over the Panguna copper mine, in a civil war that killed perhaps 15,000 people and ended with an autonomy agreement and a referendum in 2019 that voted overwhelmingly for independence. The country remains a constitutional monarchy with the British sovereign as head of state. Somare, who led it to independence at thirty-nine, was prime minister four separate times over four decades and is called the father of the nation. He died in 2021.
- Year: 1975 CE
- Category: Political
