The history of the Solomon Islands starts with a failed marketing campaign.
The Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira first sighted Santa Isabel island in the Solomons on February 6,1568. He had left Peru with two ships the previous year searching for Terra Australis, a mythic land rich in gold (of course).
At first, relations with the native islanders was cordial, but that broke down over a dispute about pigs. They were a critical food resource for both the natives and the Spaniards who demanded more of them than the locals were willing to part with. Recriminations flew. The islanders offered “a quarter of a boy with the arm and hand,” but the Spaniards rejected this reasonable compromise.
Things went from bad to worse as the expedition explored other islands in the chain. Then the Spaniards found alluvial gold in one of the rivers on Guadalcanal. Convinced that he had struck it rich, Mendaña shrewdly named the island group Islas Salomon, hoping to promote colonization by suggesting that he had discovered the source of the fabled riches of Solomon.
It didn't work. Europeans didn’t visit the islands again until 1767, when the British navy sighted the the islands.
The British finally established a protectorate over the Solomons in 1898, establishing sugarcane and copra plantations.
After defeating the British at Singapore, the Japanese took control of the islands. Recognizing that the Solomons' strategic location was key to supporting a Japanese invasion first of New Guinea, then of Australia, they immediately started construction of an airfield.
The Americans realized that the occupation of Australia would be a disaster. leaving Hawaii as the only Allied outpost in the Pacific, ensuring a much longer war or strengthening the possibility of a negotiated peace on terms favorable to the Japanese. So in August, 1942, only two months after the victory at Midway, the U.S. launched an invasion to take the island back.
Today, the Solomons are an independent nation comprising over 900 islands. As a constitutional monarchy, the government has a local as prime minister and Queen Elizabeth II as its queen. Which explains her face on the coins and Prince Philip’s name on the highway from the airport to Honiara.
Solomon Islands are in the Melanesian region of Oceania. For whatever reason, the group has never attracted as much foreign development and tourism as Fiji and Polynesia. Indonesian and Chinese companies are logging hardwoods extensively in the jungles of Guadalcanal, but tourism is only beginning to become established.
The local unemployment rate is 65%, but that is a misleading statistic since much of the population engages in subsistence farming. They grow enough to support themselves, supplementing their diet with fish, chicken, and, yep, pigs. Boys are officially off the menu.
Healthcare is free, but education is not, so most poor children remain uneducated. Australia provides educational assistance, but this tends to benefit only those rich enough to afford to send their kids to school.
Locals supplement their incomes in various ways. The roads are lined with vendors selling betelnut, fresh coconuts, and vegetables.
The many rivers double as car washes.
Snack vendors sell fried fish and chicken. Very popular on weekends.
Like most poor countries, the Solomons have a serious trash problem.
In the big city, (Honiara has a population of between 65-70,000) the central market offers a wider selection of goods.
Including these beauties. I'm not sure if they're destined to be pets or dinner.
The only museum in town is the National Cultural Museum. It has an exhibits on the 20,000 year record of human presence here. There's also a good exhibit on the native contribution to the Coastwatcher program that kept the Allies informed of Japanese movements during the war.
As well as examples of traditional woodcarving.
To me, it looks like an intriguing combination of African and Inuit styles.
The place has good bones. It needs a better marketing campaign.
P.
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