Melanesia
Who drew the line around these islands? The French navigator Jules Dumont d'Urville popularised the name Melanesia in a paper published in 1832, taking it from the skin colour of the islanders while Polynesia and Micronesia were named for their geography. The reasoning was abandoned and the label was not: it now names a group these countries run, one that seats a New Caledonian independence movement in France's place.
Common questions
Questions about Melanesia
Which countries are in Melanesia?
Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, which is the set the M49 standard of the United Nations Statistics Division files under the name. Four of them are sovereign states; New Caledonia is administered by France and sits on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, to which the General Assembly returned it by resolution 41/41 of 2 December 1986.
Why is the region called Melanesia?
The name comes from the Greek for black islands, and it was applied to this part of the Pacific for the skin colour of the people living there. Polynesia and Micronesia, by contrast, were named for the number and the size of their islands. Jules Dumont d'Urville is generally credited with the division, through a paper published in 1832, though the terms and the racial reasoning behind them were already circulating in Europe before he wrote.
Is West Papua part of Melanesia?
It depends on which reading is used, and this catalogue takes no position between them. By culture and language the western half of New Guinea is Melanesian; by the M49 standard it belongs to Indonesia and is filed under South-Eastern Asia. The Melanesian Spearhead Group has recorded both claims at once: in June 2015 it admitted Indonesia as an associate member and gave the United Liberation Movement for West Papua the standing of an observer.
What is the Melanesian Spearhead Group?
A regional group founded on the Agreed Principles of Cooperation signed at Port Vila on 14 March 1988 by Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, joined by the FLNKS of New Caledonia in 1989 and by Fiji in 1996. A trade agreement followed in 1993 and a secretariat opened at Port Vila in 2008. The FLNKS seat is what makes it unusual: an independence movement holds full membership beside four governments.