What makes Micronesia a region

Where the name came from, and what it covers

The division of the Pacific into Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia was set out by Jules Dumont d'Urville before the Société de Géographie in Paris in 1831, and Micronesia in it means small islands rather than one people. The M49 standard of the United Nations Statistics Division files every one of these under Micronesia, together with the United States Minor Outlying Islands, and says of its own groupings that they carry no political meaning. Read as ethnography instead, the line runs through Kiribati, whose Gilbert Islands fall inside it while the Phoenix and Line Islands to the east lie in what the same division calls Polynesia. Both readings are in print and the catalogue records the argument rather than settling it.

Three administrations, and what they left

Japan held the Marshalls, the Carolines and the Northern Marianas under a League of Nations mandate after 1920. The Security Council approved the trusteeship agreement on 2 April 1947 that made them the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands under United States administration, and the territory came apart in pieces. The Northern Marianas approved a commonwealth covenant with 78.8% of the vote in a plebiscite on 17 June 1975, and their constitution took effect on 9 January 1978. The Compact of Free Association entered into force for the Marshall Islands on 21 October 1986, for the Federated States of Micronesia on 3 November 1986 and for Palau on 1 October 1994. The Security Council found the trusteeship's objectives attained for the first three on 22 December 1990 and for Palau on 10 November 1994. In the middle of that period the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests at Bikini and Enewetak between 1946 and 1958, and the concrete dome poured over the crater on Runit in 1980 still holds the debris.

Guam came under the same flag by another route, ceded by Spain in the Treaty of Paris of 10 December 1898 and unincorporated ever since. Kiribati and Nauru came through London and Canberra. Nauru, a German protectorate, then a mandate, then a trusteeship administered by Australia on behalf of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, became independent on 31 January 1968. The Gilbert Islands, joined to the Ellice group in one colony until the Ellice Islands separated in 1975 and became Tuvalu, took the name Kiribati at independence on 12 July 1979. The split is still legible: the US dollar is the currency in Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau, while Kiribati and Nauru use the Australian dollar and are also the two that drive on the left.

Sea rather than land

The combined land area is about 3,200 square kilometres, and the exclusive economic zones drawn around it run to millions. The Nauru Agreement, signed in 1982, binds the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru and Palau alongside Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu; its Vessel Day Scheme, adopted in 2007 and applied to purse seine fishing from 2012, sells days at sea rather than tonnes of fish. Height decides most of the rest. Guam rises to 1,332 metres at Mount Lamlam and Pohnpei to 791 metres at Dolohmwar, while the Marshall Islands reach 10 metres at Likiep Atoll, Nauru 70 metres at Command Ridge and Kiribati 81 metres on the raised limestone of Banaba. Every sovereign member belongs to the Alliance of Small Island States. Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, as unincorporated territories of the United States, hold no seat in the General Assembly and appear in no group on their records.