Papua New Guinea's history: two colonies made into one state

How the Highlands were farmed before any outsider came

The first people reached New Guinea while the sea was low and the island was joined to Australia. Wikipedia's history of the country puts the arrival of modern humans in New Guinea, Australia and the Bismarck Archipelago at around 42,000 to 45,000 years ago, while noting that some estimates run to 60,000; Britannica writes that parts of New Guinea may have been occupied 50,000 years ago. Bougainville was settled by about 28,000 years ago and Manus by about 20,000. Rising water flooded the Torres Strait around 8,500 years ago by Wikipedia's account, some 8,000 by Britannica's, and cut the island off.

What makes the deep past of Papua New Guinea unusual is farming. The Kuk Early Agricultural Site, 116 hectares of swamp at about 1,500 metres near Mount Hagen, was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2008. UNESCO describes it as wetland worked almost continuously for 7,000 and possibly 10,000 years, with a move from planting on mounds at the swamp edge around 7,000 to 6,400 years ago to draining the swamp with ditches dug by wooden tools from about 4,000 years ago. Bananas, taro and yam were propagated from cuttings. UNESCO counts Kuk among the few places where the evidence points to agriculture developing independently.

The crop that now feeds the Highlands came much later. Britannica dates the arrival of the sweet potato from the Americas to only 300 or 400 years ago, and Wikipedia's history links it to larger pig herds, more people in the high valleys and the spread of the "big man" form of leadership. Taro, the older staple, is still the main food in some isolated basins such as Telefomin.

On the coasts and islands the long story is one of exchange. Austronesian-speaking people of the Lapita culture reached the Bismarck Archipelago by 3,300 years ago, and pottery, pigs, chickens and dogs are associated with their arrival. Pots, shell ornaments, food and forest products moved along chains of trading partners, among them the Kula ring and the Hiri trade cycle, though apart from some alliances each community functioned largely on its own.

Who divided the eastern half of the island

European sighting came early and settlement late. The Portuguese Jorge de Meneses may have landed in 1526 or 1527 and called the place Ilhas dos Papuas, and the Spaniard Yñigo Ortiz de Retez named it New Guinea in 1545. For three centuries little followed. The Dutch claimed the western half in 1828, though Britannica notes their control stayed nominal until 1898.

The eastern half was taken in the 1880s, by two powers at once. In 1884 the German New Guinea Company began to administer the north-east quarter and Britain declared a protectorate over the south-east. British New Guinea was annexed outright on 4 September 1888, passed to the new Commonwealth of Australia in 1902 and became the Territory of Papua under the Papua Act of 1905, with Australian administration formal from 1906. The German company handed its colony to the imperial government in 1899.

The two halves were run on different lines. Germany built plantations on the islands and around Madang and moved labourers from the Sepik, the Markham valley and Buka to work them, and Tok Pisin, a pidgin that had grown out of the labour trade, spread through German New Guinea. In Papua the lieutenant governor Sir Hubert Murray, in office from 1908 to 1940, kept a protective and paternalist regime that, in Britannica's words, did little to encourage colonial investment, and Hiri Motu became the working language of the south.

How gold and patrols reached the Highlands

Australian troops took German New Guinea in 1914, and from 9 May 1921 Australia held it as a Class C mandate of the League of Nations, the Territory of New Guinea. Papua remained an Australian territory in law. Until 1949 the two had separate administrations both controlled by Australia, a split that later complicated the independent country's legal system.

Gold changed the mandate first. Finds at Edie Creek near Wau and on the Bulolo River in the 1920s drew prospectors and capital, and within a decade gold had become the territory's main export. The prospectors also walked into the interior. In the early 1930s they and the patrols that followed found the broad Highlands valleys inhabited by close to a million people unknown to Europeans, a figure Britannica gives as nearly one million and Wikipedia's history as over a million. Regular government access to some valleys took until the 1950s, and by 1970 about 170,000 hectares were still officially regarded as uncontrolled.

What the Pacific War did to the territories

Japanese forces took Rabaul, the capital of the mandate, on 22 and 23 January 1942 and landed on the north coast of the mainland. The seaborne advance on Port Moresby was turned back by the Battle of the Coral Sea, and the Japanese tried the overland route instead, over the Owen Stanley Range by the Kokoda Track. From July 1942 Australian militia battalions and then regular troops fought them along it. The Australian War Memorial records the seven months of fighting in Papua and notes that "Trail" and "Track" are both correct names for the path, the first adopted by the Australian Army as a battle honour and the second used by veterans. Papuan carriers who brought wounded soldiers down the track were called the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels by the Australians.

Australian troops defeated a Japanese landing at Milne Bay in August and September 1942, and Australian and American forces took the beachheads at Buna, Gona and Sanananda at heavy cost. Fighting went on in New Guinea and on Bougainville until the Japanese surrender in August 1945. Wikipedia's history puts the dead of the New Guinea campaign at some 200,000 Japanese against about 7,000 Australian and 7,000 American service personnel.

The war ended the separation of the two territories in practice. Civil government in both was suspended in favour of one military administration, people moved and mixed on a new scale, and Tok Pisin reached Papua for the first time in large numbers.

How Australia joined Papua and New Guinea

The joint wartime administration became law. The Papua New Guinea Provisional Administration Act of 1945 kept the two under one administration, New Guinea became a United Nations trust territory under Australia in 1946, and the Papua and New Guinea Act of 1949 named the union the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. A Legislative Council sat from 1951 with 28 members, three of them Papua New Guineans.

Policy after the war favoured smallholders. Britannica records that Arabica coffee grown by Highlands families spread quickly from the 1950s, and that cacao was taken up in the islands and around Madang. A World Bank mission invited by Canberra reported in 1964 on how the territory's economy should be developed, and its report framed economic policy up to and beyond independence. A census in 1966 found that 37% of people spoke Tok Pisin, 13% English and 8% Hiri Motu.

Why independence came on an Australian timetable

The first House of Assembly, 64 members with a Papua New Guinean majority for the first time, opened on 8 June 1964 after elections in February. Wikipedia's history records that 89% of its members spoke Tok Pisin, which soon became the main language of debate. Pangu Pati, formed before the 1968 election, was the first party and the one that asked for independence; most of the parties that followed were defined by how fast they wanted it.

Wikipedia's history argues that the decisive push came from Australian politics. Gough Whitlam, then leader of the Australian opposition, visited in 1969 and made self-government an election issue, and after he became Australian prime minister in December 1972 his government brought self-government in on 1 December 1973. In Papua New Guinea itself there was no strong shared national identity and some fear that the larger peoples would dominate the rest; the consensus for independence was built in the following two years by local leaders. The flag and emblem were adopted in June 1971 and the territory was renamed Papua New Guinea in July. Michael Somare became chief minister after the 1972 election. The Bank of Papua New Guinea opened in October 1972, the kina replaced the Australian dollar on 19 April 1975, and independence came on 16 September 1975, with Somare as first prime minister. The country joined the United Nations on 10 October 1975.

Australia's money did not leave with its officials. Britannica records that Australian aid provided nearly half of the national budget at independence, and Wikipedia's history that the Australian contribution fell from 40% of government revenue in 1975 to 17% in 1988.

How Bougainville fought and voted to leave

Bougainville tested the new state before it existed. The Panguna copper and gold mine, which Australia had opened to cut the territory's dependence on aid, became the subject of a dispute over money, and on 1 September 1975 Bougainville's leaders declared a Republic of the North Solomons. It rejoined in early 1976 under an agreement that gave the provinces their own governments.

Fighting began in late 1988 over the damage the mine had done to land and rivers, the division of its revenue among landowners and the number of mainlanders on the island. Militants sabotaged Panguna, which closed in 1989, and secessionists proclaimed independence in May 1990; the national government withdrew its services and attempted a naval blockade. The death toll is uncertain: Britannica gives estimates between 7,000 and 20,000, most from the loss of health care, and Wikipedia's history says around 20,000 are thought to have died. In January 1997 the national government hired mercenaries from South Africa through the firm Sandline; the commander of the defence force, Jerry Singirok, refused the plan and detained them, and the crisis forced the prime minister, Julius Chan, to step aside.

Talks sponsored by New Zealand produced a truce at Burnham in October 1997 and a permanent ceasefire in 1998. The Bougainville Peace Agreement of 2001 promised autonomy and a referendum, and Bougainville elected its own parliament in 2005. The referendum ran from 23 November to 7 December 2019. The Bougainville Referendum Commission counted 176,928 votes for independence and 3,043 for greater autonomy, out of 181,067 ballot papers. The vote was not binding: under the agreement the National Parliament has the last word. Wikipedia's account of the negotiations records an agreement of July 2021 aiming at independence by 2027, the Era Kone Covenant of April 2022 on how Parliament would ratify the result, and a recommendation from the Bougainville Independence Leaders Consultation Forum in July 2026 that independence come on 1 September 2030. As of that account, the National Parliament had yet to ratify the agreement.

Why governments in Port Moresby keep falling

No government since independence has ruled alone, and few have lasted a full parliament. Britannica lists the turnover of the first decades: Somare replaced by Chan on a no-confidence vote in March 1980, back after the 1982 election, removed again in November 1985 in favour of Paias Wingti, who lost office in turn in June 1988. Parliament lengthened the period in which a new government is safe from such a vote from six to 18 months in 1991. A 2001 law on party integrity tried to stop members switching sides, and parts of it were struck down by the Supreme Court in July 2010.

The worst test of the constitution came in 2011 and 2012, when Parliament declared the prime minister's office vacant and elected Peter O'Neill while Somare was abroad for treatment, and the Supreme Court ruled in December 2011 that Somare's removal had been illegal. For some months there were two claimants to government. The 2012 election settled it. Later crises came from outside politics as well: a drought in 1997, a tsunami on the north-west coast in 1998 that Britannica says killed some 2,000 people, and riots in Port Moresby and Lae on 10 January 2024 that Wikipedia's history says cost 22 lives after police and public servants protested over pay.

The country marked fifty years of independence on 16 September 2025. In March 2025 the constitution was amended to name Christianity the official religion, and in October 2025 Papua New Guinea and Australia signed a mutual defence treaty, which the Australian foreign ministry calls the Pukpuk Treaty. The rest of the present is in the politics article.