BSIP Stamp

The Solomon Islands entered the European record in 1567 when the Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña sighted the archipelago during an expedition launched from Peru. Although it is uncertain whether he was the first European to see the islands, Mendaña believed he had found a land of great natural wealth and named them Islas de Salomón. His expedition charted parts of the southern group, assigning names such as San Cristóval, Guadalcanal and Ysabel. On returning to Peru he attempted to organise a second voyage to establish a colony, but it was not until 1595 that he sailed again with Pedro Fernandes de Queirós. This expedition discovered the Marquesas and the Santa Cruz Islands, but delays, illness and internal disputes undermined the venture. Mendaña died on Santa Cruz, and the mission collapsed soon afterwards.

With the Spanish suppressing detailed accounts of the voyages in order to protect their claims, the islands effectively disappeared from European knowledge. Even their approximate position became uncertain. They were not encountered again until 1767, when Philip Carteret sighted Gower Island and passed along the eastern fringe of the group without realising he was near Mendaña’s discoveries. In the following year Louis Antoine de Bougainville charted the northern islands—Buka, Bougainville and Choiseul—and sailed through the channel that now bears his name. In 1769 Jean-François de Surville made the first extended European stay in the islands despite hostile encounters with local communities. He applied French names to several islands and referred to the region as Terre des Arsacides, but French geographers soon recognised the connection with Mendaña’s Islas de Salomón.

British interest followed. In 1788 Lieutenant John Shortland charted the southern chain, mistakenly believing it to be a single landmass and naming it New Georgia. In 1792 Captain Edward Manning sailed through the strait dividing Ysabel and Choiseul, which now carries his name. Traders attempted to establish a presence in the islands during the early nineteenth century, but their efforts were sporadic and often violent. Missionaries also viewed the Solomons as a potential field of work, though with limited success. In 1845 the French Marist Fathers landed on Isabel, where Mgr Jean-Baptiste Épalle, the first Vicar Apostolic of Melanesia, was killed shortly after arrival. The mission was abandoned three years later, though it resumed in 1851.

John Coleridge Patteson

A more sustained Anglican presence began in the 1850s. In 1856 John Coleridge Patteson, later Bishop of Melanesia, made his first visit to the islands. His method relied on removing small groups of young men to the Melanesian Mission’s central school in the New Hebrides, training them there, and returning them to their home islands as teachers. This avoided the immediate confrontations that had marked earlier Catholic attempts, though the risks remained considerable. Patteson travelled widely through the Solomons and neighbouring island groups, often alone or with a small crew, and became a familiar figure in many communities.

The dangers of the region increased sharply as the labour trade expanded. From the late 1860s recruiters for plantations in Queensland and Fiji—some legitimate, many not—operated throughout the Solomons. Kidnapping, coercion and retaliatory violence were common, and islanders often could not distinguish between recruiters and missionaries. On 20 September 1871, when Patteson landed on Nukapu Island in the Reef Islands, he was killed by local men. The act was almost certainly a reprisal for earlier abductions carried out by labour vessels, one of which had recently taken several Nukapu islanders. His body was placed in a canoe and pushed out to sea, a gesture suggesting ritual rather than random violence. The killing caused widespread anger in Britain and forced the government to take a more active role in regulating the labour trade, increasing naval patrols and strengthening its presence in the western Pacific.

By the 1870s the labour trade had extended its influence from the New Hebrides into the Solomons, bringing further instability. British concern centred less on territorial ambition than on the behaviour of British subjects in the region and the inability of existing arrangements to protect either islanders or missionaries. In 1893 Britain declared a protectorate over the southern Solomons—Malaita, Marovo, Guadalcanal and San Cristóval—to control the labour trade and prevent rival colonial powers from gaining a foothold. The northern islands remained under German influence until the Anglo-German Convention of 14 November 1899, which finalised the division of the archipelago. Germany ceded its remaining Solomon Islands to Britain in exchange for recognition of its interests elsewhere in the Pacific.

Under British rule the protectorate developed slowly. Administration was thin, infrastructure minimal, and colonial authority often limited to coastal areas. Missionaries—Anglican, Catholic and others—played a significant role in education, health and local governance. The islands became strategically important during the Second World War. From 1942 to 1945 the Japanese occupied parts of the archipelago, and the ensuing Allied counter-offensive, particularly the Guadalcanal campaign, was one of the major Pacific operations of the war. The conflict brought new infrastructure, increased external contact and the beginnings of political consciousness. After the war the protectorate moved gradually toward self-government, and the Solomon Islands achieved full independence in 1978.