Abstract
From the fifteenth century onwards, just a handful western nations and their royal courts simply divided the entire world into their colonies and resources for self-interest. After the discovery by Portuguese and Spanish explorers, Papua New Guinea (PNG) was essentially part of the Dutch, British and German colonial commercial enterprise, Japanese intrusion, and then after WW1 and WW2 widely handed over to Australia as its protectorate, supported by the so-called League of Nations and later by the United Nations (UN) through a mandate essentially to this very day. It‘s part of the ‘Pacific Theatre’ of the U.S., now also affected by Chinese and ongoing EU interests. The ‘independence’ of PNG, declared in 1975—and arguably a status obtained way too late and simply done to save money for Australia—resulted into a Dominion recognition in the British Commonwealth headed by the late English Queen to be a ‘modern’ nation construct and for being set up for globalization and subsequent resource extraction again by others. PNG itself was hardly involved nor really requesting it even. Arguably, PNG cannot deliver to those international demands well and is not really set up for doing so by its former colonial powers. PNG lies bare for the taker, e.g. corporations of mining, oil and gas, timber and fisheries industries, including the science enterprise collecting specimen in a biodiversity wilderness environment that is still perceived -by some- as ‘significantly undercollected.’ Repatriation remains an effort to pay back PNG in a fair way for a better set up. But that has not really happened yet, or has not happened well, e.g. from Australia and most colonial powers, including Japan and Germany. While PNG has lived quite well for over 98% of its time by itself it’s the western influence, Christian missionary nations and sects and a similar globalization approach to live that destroys in PNG a lifestyle, a culture, a land- and seascape, a sustainability governance and parts of the atmosphere, and it leaves dramatic global repercussions in the universe while the Melanesian way remains quite resilient.
Never leave the law to the lawyers
Source unknown
…having been requested by the people of Papua New Guinea, through their Constituent Assembly, to become the Queen and Head of State of Papua New Guinea…
PNG Constitution ( https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Papua_New_Guinea_2016.pdf?lang=en )
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Notes
- 1.
Germany has a longer and very bad colonial history, e.g. with Venezuela as early as 1528 (Seewald, 2022).
- 2.
This concept easily goes back to Australia, UK and Spain for instance. Imposing the western model onto PNG may be seen as setting up another death spiral for PNG and its people. That is shown widely elsewhere already, e.g. Africa and Latin America. And PNG is to follow that trend with open eyes. The path of sustainable development has left us with no other assessment (e.g. Rich, 1994).
- 3.
See Schneppen (2001) for German researcher of East Africa, founder of the Society for German Colonization, who got deprived of the imperial high commission for Kilimanjaro in 1897 due to misuse of official power in his treatment of the Africans. Similar cases are now also investigated for Oceania and Papua New Guinea, e.g. Muehlhahn et al. (2014).
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Huettmann, F. (2023). Colonial After-Times in Papua New Guinea: Urgency for Repatriation, Biodiversity Compensation and Fair Treatment to Assure a Better Global Future. In: Globalization and Papua New Guinea: Ancient Wilderness, Paradise, Introduced Terror and Hell. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20262-9_5
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