Papua New Guinea - German New Guinea
German New Guinea consisted of the north-eastern quarter of the main island of New Guinea known as Kaiser-Wilhelmsland in honour of Wilhelm II the German Emperor and King of Prussia, and several island groups in the Bismarck Archipelago. Buka and Bougainville in the north Solomon Islands were added in 1886. The Netherlands controlled the western half of New Guinea, Germany the north-eastern part and Britain the south-eastern part.
New Ireland and Manus Island were added to its colony over the next decades. These areas were administered as a protectorate from 1884 until the local defeat of the German’s in 1914 when Australian forces took control of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, its nearby islands of the Bismarck Archipelago and today’s New Britain and New Ireland. These areas were administered under the Mandated Trust Territories of the League of Nations and Australia governed them on behalf of the Commonwealth from 1921.
After World War Two both areas were administered by Australia as a single territory and subsequently became known as Papua New Guinea in 1972. PNG was granted self-governing status on 1 December 1973 as a prelude to independence, and a ministry headed by Chief Minister Michael Somare who also became the country’s first prime minister was created to guide the country to independence on the 16th September 1975. Thereafter the national government was divided into provincial and local administrative structures based on the Westminster system.
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