History of oceania

Advances of Australia's European Exploration up to 1812
1606 Willem Jansz 1606 Luis Váez de Torres 1616 Dirk Hartog 1619 Frederick of Houtman 1644 Abel Tasman 1696 Willem de Vlamingh 1699 William Dampier 1770 James Cook 1797-1799 George Bass 1801-1803 Matthew Flinders

Prehistory of Oceania and first settlers

Human settlement of Oceania occurred in several waves. The first settlers were Homo sapiens from Southeast Asia. From them descend the current Papuans and native Australians. These first migrations towards New Guinea and the surrounding islands until reaching Australia did not take place until 60,000 or 50,000 BCE. C. It is considered that around 40,000 a. C., humans had already populated the western part of Oceania known as Near Oceania.

A second human wave was that of the Austronesian peoples (beginning between 5000 BC and 6000 BC), also of Asian origin, more specifically from Taiwan and the Philippine Islands. The Austronesians were seafarers and between 1,500 and 1,000 B.C. C., they had reached the archipelagos of Bismarck and the Solomon Islands from where they were going to undertake the colonization of more distant islands in the Pacific. They then passed from the eastern end of Near Oceania (Bougainville Island and the Solomon Islands archipelago) to the remote islands of New Caledonia, Fiji and Samoa, leaving behind vestiges of a Neolithic cultural complex called the Lapita culture. In this same period of time, they traveled to the islands located in the western part of Micronesia (Palau, Yap and the Mariana Islands). The part of Oceania covered by this second extension of human settlement is known as Far Oceania.

They were the first settlers of many parts of Oceania, particularly Polynesia, New Zealand or Hawaii'i, reaching at least as far as Easter Island.^{[citation needed]} The settlement of Micronesia and Polynesia lasted for three millennia from 2,000 B.C. C. until the I millennium AD. C.. New Zealand, for example, was populated between the s. IX and XIV by the Maoris.^{[citation required]}

Heyday of the Tu'i Tonga Empire

In 950 A.D. C. the Tu'i Tonga Empire dominated most of the islands of Oceania, in its beginnings the kings managed to get rid of foreign rule and consolidated the power of the empire in what is now Tonga. Around the year 1200 it began its expansion that lasted until about 1500. The empire conquered what is known today as Fiji, parts of Samoa and other Polynesian islands such as the Cook Islands and Niue. The great ability to build canoes and the good system applied to invasions made it easy for Tu'i Tonga to establish itself on even more islands.

Close to the year 1500, many problems broke out in the empire's royalty that weakened its figure in the colonies, which achieved a lot of autonomy from the royal crown and the central power. In 1799, Tuku'aho, the king who held power at the time, was assassinated, sparking a terrible civil war. With the European presence, the civil war finished devastating both sides, leaving the decimated empire in the hands of the British crown.

Pre-Hispanic explorations in Oceania (theory)

15th century

Before Christopher Columbus arrived in America (1492), the then ‘hatun auqui’ (conquering prince) Túpac Yupanqui –in the future he would become the tenth ruler of the Inca civilization– undertook an expedition to Polynesia. The mission was to find new species of animals and plants that could be useful to the empire. He was only 25 years old.

After gaining control of Puná Island (Ecuador), which he reached by raft, Túpac Yupanqui received news of the existence of two distant islands, Auachumbi and Ninachumbi, which housed a wide variety of resources.

With 120 boats and 20,000 men, the young prince began his adventure to these two islands, which would be Mangareva and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). He would also arrive at Nuku Hiva, in the Las Marquesas archipelago. After the spectacular journey, he returned to Cusco, the capital of Tahuantinsuyo. The trip would have taken him about a year and a half.

The chroniclers Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Martín de Murúa and Miguel Cabello de Balboa – who lived in the Viceroyalty of Peru in the 16th century – coincide with this account and are the only sources of this event. In addition to the fact that on the island of Mangareva there is a legend about a king Tupa, who came from the east on rafts with sails, bringing gold and silverware, ceramics and textiles and of whom there is a dance to this day.

European explorations in Oceania

XVI

On the first circumnavigation of the globe, Ferdinand Magellan sighted the Mariana Islands and other islands of Oceania in 1521, before being killed in the Philippines on the island of Mactan in a scuffle with the natives of the country. Regardless, the Portuguese Cristovão de Mendonça arrived at Botany Bay (Australia) in the year 1522, shores also visited three years later by Gomes de Sequeira. Soon after other Portuguese sailors joined the exploitation of the region; in 1525 Diego de Rocha discovered the Caroline Islands, which were also visited the following year by Toribio Alonso de Salazar, and in 1526 Jorge de Meneses arrived in Nueva Guinea. Other explorers of the region at this time were Luis Váez de Torres, Miguel López de Legazpi, García Jofre de Loaísa, Álvaro de Mendaña and Ruy López de Villalobos.

17th century

The Dutch also sailed the region, and Abel Tasman crossed the coast of Australia in 1642, arriving at the island that was named in his honor Tasmania and the islands, Tonga, Fiji and German New Guinea. Meanwhile, expeditions set out from Acapulco (Mexico) and Callao (Peru) and found numerous islands in the Pacific.

18th century

Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch rivalries were replaced by that of the English and French in the 18th century. Between 1764 and 1770 the area was explored by John Byron, Samuel Wallis, Philip Carteret and others, who toured Tahiti, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides. For his part, the Englishman James Cook made three voyages to the Pacific islands between 1768 and 1779, reaching the Society Islands, New Zealand, the Marquesas Islands, New Hebrides and Hawaii.

On April 6, 1772, Easter Day Jacobo Roggeveen, a Dutch navigator sighted Easter Island, officially discovering it, although an expedition sent from Callao, on October 10, 1770, sighted the island on the 15th of November. A circumnavigation was carried out in order to map the island. The navigators were very surprised by the large statues, the Moai. In other expeditions, the marines were also surprised by the great height of some natives, who reached 2.17 meters. In addition, men were much more numerous than women on that island, the difference was very noticeable. The natives lived in caves and were full of tattoos, the natives of Easter Island were one of the ethnic groups that most surprised the European colonizers.

The French explored the islands simultaneously with the English. Between 1826 and 1840 Jules Dumont D'Urville did it and then Jean-François de La Pérouse between 1785 and 1787. All these trips determined the distribution of Oceania between the colonizing powers: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, the United States and Germany to a lesser extent.

Independence of the islands

At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, desires for independence began in the colonies, Australia and New Zealand, in 1901 and in 1907 they paved the way for the other countries towards independence. The weakest and poorest countries took a long time to declare their independence, in 1962 Samoa declared independence from New Zealand, which had occupied it years before, then Nauru in 1968, Fiji and Tonga in 1970, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu in 1978, the United States Federations of Micronesia and Kiribati in 1979 (although recognized in 1990 for Micronesia), Vanuatu in 1980, the Marshall Islands in 1990 and Palau in 1994 followed in the process of freedom. They formed the Pacific Islands Forum and still today try to help countries like Guam, New Caledonia and French Polynesia that are still ruled by powers.