 bougainville is a province of papua new guinea. it was named after the french navigator louis antoine de bougainville. ==prehistory== bougainville has been inhabited for at least 33,000 years. its people speak languages belonging to three language families, the northern and southern bougainville families, whose origins are unknown and presumably ancient, and languages of the austronesian family, which arrived with the more recent lapita culture from the west three millennia ago. :"[a] trait shared by the present-day descendants of both northerners and southerners is their skin-colour, which is very black. indeed, it is darker than that of any population of present-day pacific islanders, including the present-day indigenes of new ireland, the larger homeland of the first bougainvilleans. the presence of bougainville as a âblack spotâ in an island world of brownskins (later called redskins) raises a question that cannot now be answered. were the genes producing that darker pigmentation carried by the first bougainvilleans when they arrived? or did they evolve by natural or âsocialâ selection, during the millennia in which the descendants of those pioneers remained isolated, reproductively, from neighbouring islanders? nothing now known about bougainvilleâs physical environment can support an argument for the natural selection of its peoplesâ distinctively black pigmentation; therefore a case might be made for social selection, namely an aesthetic (and hence reproductive) preference for black skin."douglas oliver, black islanders 1991, p. 3.  ==european colonisation== the german new guinea company established control over bougainville and buka, choiseul, shortland and treasury islands in 1885 but did not extend its farther control southwards in the solomons, whose southern islands came under a british protectorate in 1893 with the eastern islands being added in 1899. in 1900, germany transferred all of its claims in the solomons other than bougainville and buka island to great britain while britain, in return, withdrew from western samoa. during world war i, australia occupied bougainville together with the rest of german new guinea; the league of nations placed the territory under australian mandate in 1920. == second world war ==  in 1942, bougainville was occupied by the japanese, and was used as a base to attack guadalcanal and other allied territory. the 3rd marine division landed on the west coast of bougainville in november 1943, and shortly afterwards the battle of empress augusta bay was fought between cruisers and destroyers of the u.s. navy and the [
Autonomous_Region_of_Bougainville History_of_Papua_New_Guinea