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Bismarck Archipelago

Archipelago in Papua New Guinea

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Three volcanoes in Papua New Guinea’s West New Britain province spewed ash on June 21, 2005. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this im
NASA image courtesy Jesse Allen, based on data from the MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC · Public domain

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History

The first inhabitants of the archipelago arrived around 30,000–40,000 years ago. They may have traveled from New Guinea, by boat across the Bismarck Sea or via a temporary land bridge, created by an uplift in the Earth's crust. Later arrivals included the Lapita people, the direct ancestors of the Austronesian peoples of Polynesia, eastern Micronesia, and Island Melanesia.

The first European to visit these islands was Dutch explorer Jacob le Maire in 1616. The islands remained unsettled by western Europeans until they were annexed as part of the German protectorate of German New Guinea in 1884. The area was named in honour of the Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

On 13 March 1888, a volcano erupted on Ritter Island causing a megatsunami. Almost the entire volcano fell into the ocean, leaving a small rim of the east side of the original island.

Following the outbreak of World War I, the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force seized the islands in 1914 and Australia later received a League of Nations mandate for the islands. They remained under Australian administration—interrupted only by Japanese occupation during World War II—until Papua New Guinea became independent in September 1975.

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