A history of Nauru

Abstract

Nauru is a very small, very isolated island with a small indigenous population, yet in 1963 it was making world headlines. Microscopic though its problems were, they seemed typical of those of many emerging countries, and the very limitations of its existence, circumscribing political, economic, social and cultural change, promised to allow me the opportunity to examine such variations at close range without the complication of the many factors which would intrude in larger, more populous areas. From the pre-annexation days before 1888 Nauru's evolution to 1966 has been quite complex. Politically it has experienced four colonial administrations and now pursues the promise of self-government. Economically it has moved from a time of subsistence overshadowed by droughts into sixty years of abundance by Pacific standards which now, however, seem to be threatened by the imminent exhaustion of the phosphate deposits; and socially and culturally it has changed from a pre-European contact stage of 'happy savagery to a baffling cultural unease. A hope of being able to understand the 1966 Nauruan is another reason lying behind this work.