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Micronesia [ˌmaɪkroʊˈniʒə] (help·info), from the Greek mikros (μικρός) (meaning small) and nesos (νῆσος) (meaning island), is a subregion of Oceania, comprising hundreds of small islands in the Pacific Ocean. The Philippines lie to the northwest, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Melanesia to the west and south, and Polynesia to the east.
Geography and history
This region consists of many hundreds of small islands spread over a large region of the western Pacific. The only empire known to have originated in Micronesia was based in Yap.
The term "Micronesia" was first proposed to distinguish the region in 1831 by Jules Dumont d'Urville.
Politically, Micronesia is divided into eight nation-states and territories:
Much of the area was to come under European domination quite early. Guam, the Northern Marianas, and the Caroline Islands (what would later become the FSM and Palau) were colonized early by the Spanish. These island territories were part of the Spanish East Indies and governed from Spanish Philippines
since the early 17th century until 1898. Full European expansion did
not come, however, until the early 20th century, when the area would be
divided between:
During the First World War, Germany's Pacific island territories were taken from it and became League of Nations Mandates in 1923. Nauru became an Australian mandate, while Germany's other territories in Micronesia were given as a mandate to Japan and was named The South Pacific Mandate. This remained the situation until Japan's defeat in the Second World War, when its mandate became a United Nations Trusteeship ruled by the United States, the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.
Today, all of Micronesia (with the exceptions of Guam and Wake
Island, which are U.S. territories, and the Northern Mariana Islands,
which is a U.S. Commonwealth) are independent states.
People
The people today form many ethnicities, but are all descended from
and belong to the Micronesian culture. The Micronesian culture was one
of the last native cultures of the region to develop. It developed from
a mixture of Melanesians, Filipinos and Polynesians. Because of this mixture of descent, many of the ethnicities of Micronesia, feel closer to some groups in Melanesia, Polynesia or the Philippines. A good example of this are the Yapese who are related to Austronesian tribes in the Northern Philippines
Languages
The native languages of the various Micronesian indigenous peoples are classified under the Austronesian language family. Almost all of these languages belong to the Oceanic subgroup of this family; however, two exceptions are noted in Western Micronesia, which belong to the Western Malayo-Polynesian subgroup:
This latter subgroup also includes most languages spoken today in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia (Kirch, 2000: pp. 166-167).
On the eastern edge of the Federated States of Micronesia, the languages Nukuoro and Kapingamarangi represent an extreme westward extension of Polynesian.
Regional organizations
The region is home to the Micronesian Games, a quadrennial international multi-sport event involving all Micronesia's countries and territories except Wake Island.
In September 2007, journalists in the region founded the Micronesian Media Association [1].
References
- Kirch, Patrick Vinton (2000). On the Road of the Winds. An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact. University of California Press, pp. 166-167. ISBN 0-520-22347-0.
- ^ "Regional Journalists Form Micronesian Media Association", Pacific Magazine, 25 September, 2007
Classical
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