Territory of Papua and New Guinea

Two colonies with different legal statuses run by one administration for thirty-five years. Papua, in the south, had been British and passed to Australia in 1906 as an external territory; New Guinea, in the north, was German until Australian forces took it in 1914 and was afterwards a League of Nations mandate and then a United Nations trust territory. Australia governed them jointly from 1949 as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, but the two halves remained legally distinct - Papuans were Australian subjects and New Guineans were not - and the union was administrative rather than constitutional. The highlands, holding a large share of the population, had barely been contacted before the 1930s. Australian policy combined patrol officers, mission education and a colour bar, and shifted abruptly after a 1962 United Nations report criticised the slow pace of preparation. A House of Assembly was elected in 1964. Self-government came in 1973 and independence on 16 September 1975, faster than most Papua New Guineans had expected. Bougainville's copper mine opened in 1972 and its grievances outlasted the territory. Port Moresby was the administrative centre for both halves. The territory covered about 460 thousand square kilometres and several hundred language groups. Australian currency and law applied in Papua but not identically in New Guinea. The Kokoda campaign of 1942 was fought across the territory and relied heavily on Papuan carriers. Gold at Wau and Bulolo drew a rush in the 1920s and 1930s, supplied largely by aircraft because there were no roads.

• Type: Polity
• Government: Colonial administration