smcproject/ml-wiki-sentences huggingface dataset:
There were no survivors from the Glencoe , and only one Sea Nymph crew member escaped.
By some accounts, both ships were abducting Marshallese women to sell to plantation owners in other parts of the Pacific.
European and American missionaries and traders had peaceful contact with the Marshallese beginning at Ebon Atoll in the mid-1850s.
The atoll saw increased ship traffic and exposure to foreigners beginning, which also led to outbreaks of western diseases.
In February 1859, an influenza outbreak killed several commoners on Ebon.
In 1861, measles and influenza outbreaks occurred on the island, and in 1863, a typhoid fever outbreak killed several islanders.
Missionary activity
In 1855, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions assigned George Pierson to its mission in Micronesia.
He stopped at Ailinglaplap Atoll and met iroijlaplap Kaibuke before making his way to Kosrae , where we worked with 50 Marshallese castaways and learned the Marshallese language.
In November 1857, Pierson, Edward Doane and their families returned to Marshalls to establish a mission at Ebon.
The atoll's population fluctuated as Kaibuke's fleet came and went to exact tribute from his vassals; the frequent comings and goings from the atoll have helped to spread the missionaries' sermons to other islands.
Within the first few years of the mission, the missionaries noticed social changes taking place on Ebon.
Women were permitted to attend certain religious feasts for the first time, and traditional burial rites fell out of practice.
While the Marshallese continued to practice tattooing, some felt guilty about the practice and stopped carrying out the rites publicly.
Islanders also began to observe the Christian injunction against work on the weekly sabbath.
By 1876, a traveller noted that most Marshallese women on Ebon wore western dresses and jumpers, and many men wore trousers instead of traditional grass skirts.
Pierson and his wife left Ebon for their health in 1859, and Doane left in 1863, having sent his family to Hawaii two years earlier.
Both were replaced by Native Hawaiian missionaries, who ran a mission school and printed Marshallese-language bibles.
Ten Ebon islanders were baptized in 1863, and the number increased to over 100 by 1870.
By 1865, mission churches and schools had opened on Jaluit and Namdrik.
Missions spread to Mili and Majuro in 1869, and to Arno and Maloelap Atolls by 1875, at which point more than 200 Marshall Islanders had been baptized.
By the mid-1870s, most island churches were staffed by Marshall Islanders who had been trained in the mission schools.
While the church was popular among commoners, the Marshallese nobles became increasingly hostile to Christianity after Kaibuke's death in the 1863 typhoid fever outbreak.
Many of the chiefs stopped church services, and some retaliated against converts.
One Marshallese noble woman burned the houses of converts.
Francis Hezel speculates that the nobility may have seen increasing literacy and access to new information among the commoners as a threat to their authority, fueling increased hostility to Christianity, and notes an 1870 case in which a Christian commoner publicly chastised his island's chief for leading young girls astray and went unpunished.
Western commercial interests German trading station at Jaluit Atoll with a Marshallese korkor outrigger canoe in the foreground, c. 1880
In 1859, the German firm Hoffschlaeger Stapenhorst sent two traders to establish a trading post at Ebon Atoll .
In 1861, they built a coconut oil factory on the island.
In 1863, the firm suffered serious financial setbacks and withdrew from the Marshall Islands, partially due to the sinking of one of its ships while leaving Ebon.
One of the traders, Adolph Capelle , set up an independent trading firm on the island by partnering with Anton Jose DeBrum, a Portuguese whaler who arrived in 1864.
Both men married local women and developed strong connections with both the Marshall Islanders and the missionaries.
Their firm, Capelle Co., entered into an agreement to sell coconut copra to Godeffroy Son of Hamburg , a company which pioneered the production of copra in Samoa and Tonga and held a large share of Pacific copra trade.
Godeffroy exported copra to Europe where it was processed into animal feed and coconut oil, which was used in soap and candle manufacturing.
The German firms traded western goods to Marshallese chiefs in exchange for coconuts, which Marshallese commoners harvested as tribute for the chiefs.
In 1873, Capelle Co. moved its headquarters to Jaluit , which was the home of Kabua , a powerful iroij and disputed successor of Kaibuke.
Godeffroy Son also established trading posts on five islands in 1873 with a main office on Jaluit, but the European stock market crash later that year caused the firm to cut back its operations.
Capelle dominated the copra market in the early years, but in 1876, Hernsheim Co .
and New Zealand merchant Thomas Farrell both began copra trading in the Marshall Islands.
The increased competition set off a price war that disrupted the industry and proved advantageous for Marshallese suppliers.
The firms also began selling the Marshallese previously prohibited goods, including alcohol, firearms, and munitions, despite the missionaries' complaints.
The offices of the Pacific Navigation Co. on Jaluit in the late 1880s
By 1878, Hernsheim Co. had emerged as the dominant firm in the copra trade.
While Capelle Co. lost market share, Capelle and DeBrum purchased the entirety of Likiep Atoll as a copra plantation to control their buying price and supply of copra.
Capelle Co. also diversified its interests to include shipbuilding and importing.
Farrell went bankrupt in 1877, and his assets were acquired by Auckland firm Henderson Macfarlane.
Godeffroy Son went bankrupt in 1879, and in 1880, its Pacific interests were acquired by the German Trading and Plantation Company of the South Sea Islands in Hamburg ( German : Deutsche Handels- und Plantagen-Gesellschaft Der Südee Inseln zu Hamburg ), also known as DHPG.
The world market price of copra dropped in 1882; Capelle Co. sold seven of its stations in the Marshalls to DHPG and made an agreement to exclusively sell copra to Hernsheim Co. By 1885, the German firms DHPG and Hernsheim Co. controlled two-thirds of the copra trade in the Marshall Islands, with the rest split between Henderson Macfarlane of Auckland, Crawford Co. of San Francisco , and the Pacific Navigation Company of Honolulu .
In the 1870s, Marshall Islanders were coerced into working on plantations in other parts of the Pacific, a practice was known as " blackbirding ".
In 1871, the ships Eugene and Carl kidnapped men at Ailinglaplap and Mili Atolls, respectively.
In 1872, trader William Henry "Bully" Hayes kidnapped women on Mili while pirating the stations of business rivals.
Several blackbirding ships cruised the northern Marshalls specifically to obtain women that they could sell into sexual slavery in Fiji.
Mortality rates among Micronesian laborers in Fiji and Samoa were high, and few returned home.
The labor trade in Marshall Islands declined somewhat after the British government passed the Pacific Islander Protection Act 1872, but Jaluit continued to serve as a depot for transporting Gilbertese laborers and some Marshallese were transported to Hawaiian plantations as late as 1882.
Marshallese politics Kabua in western clothes, c. 1880
After the death of iroijlaplap Kaibuke during the typhoid outbreak of 1863, his two nephews Loiak and Kabua disputed who should succeed him as the paramount chief of the southern Ralik Chain .
Loiak was the iroij of Ebon Atoll and the elder nephew, who traditionally would have succeeded his uncle, but Kabua, the iroij of Jaluit Atoll , married Kaibuke's widow, making him the step-uncle and guardian of his elder cousin.
Both chiefs sought support from foreigners by befriending missionaries and working with German copra traders in order to maintain influence.
The dispute remained peaceful for twelve years, but in September 1876, the conflict nearly erupted into violence.
While both chiefs were staying on Ebon, copra trader James Lyle Young reported witnessing a mob of Loiak's followers wielding muskets and preparing to attack Kabua's followers across the lagoon.
Kabua fled to his land on Jaluit rather than engaging in battle.
In the following months, rumors circulated that Kabua would return and start a war.
Loiak staged frequent military drills on Ebon and stockpiled weapons in late 1876, but Kabua's invasion never occurred.
In May 1880, Loiak's followers invaded Jaluit to challenge Kabua, who prospered from the copra trade and whom an 1878 German treaty had recognized as the "King of the Ralik Islands."
The two armies met and carried firearms but did not fight, and there were no casualties.
Loiak's followers returned to Ebon several days later; Kabua fled to his home at Ailinglaplap Atoll , though he later returned to Jaluit.
In the late 1870s and 1880s, armed conflicts occurred between rival chiefs on both the Majuro and Arno Atolls .
On Majuro, iroij Jebrik and Rimi fought over the paramount chieftainship for several years, leaving at least 10 islanders dead before Cyprian Bridge of the passing British warship HMS Espiegle mediated a peace treaty in 1883.
In 1884, Bridge also negotiated an end to a conflict between iroij Lekman and Lijiwirak on Arno, which had been ongoing since 1878.
Both conflicts had disrupted copra production and caused famines as war parties destroyed rivals' coconut groves and other property.
Copra traders resorted to selling firearms and ammunition to maintain profits.
Western political interests Flag of the Ralik Islands made for the November 29, 1878, treaty signing with Germany.
The Ralik Chain historically was not a unified political entity, and the flag shared the same colors as the flag of the German Empire .
In 1875, the British and German governments conducted a series of secret negotiations to divide the western Pacific in spheres of influence and counter American expansion in the region.
Germany received northeastern New Guinea , the Bismarck Archipelago , and several island groups of Micronesia , including the Marshall Islands.
On November 26, 1878, the German warship SMS Ariadne anchored at Jaluit to begin treaty negotiations with the iroij of the Ralik Chain.
During the second day of negotiations, Captain Bartholomäus von Werner ordered his men to give a military demonstration featuring a bayonet charge, a rapid firing demonstration, and use of artillery blanks, which he later said was intended to "show the islanders, who have not seen anything like it before, the power of the Europeans."
On November 29, Werner signed a treaty with Kabua and several other Ralik Chain iroij which granted the German Empire " most favored nation " status in the Ralik Chain and required iroij to guarantee the rights of German citizens.
Germany secured a fuelling station at Jaluit and free use of the atoll's harbor for German vessels.
The German authorities also recognized Kabua as the "King of the Ralik Islands," though the treaty required that disputes between Marshallese and Germans would be arbitrated by German ship captains.
The German Empire established a consulate on Jaluit in 1880 with Franz Hernsheim, co-founder of Hernsheim Co., serving as the German consul to the Ralik Chain.
The United States made Adolph Capelle its consul to protect the interests of American missionaries.
German protectorate German Reich Law Gazette proclaiming the protectorate of the Marshall Islands, September 1886
Franz Hernsheim and other German business interests petitioned their government to annex the Marshall Islands into the German Empire .
The United Kingdom was the primary naval power in the Pacific, and the British government agreed to German annexation of the Marshalls in exchange for German recognition of Britain's authority over the Gilbert and Ellice Islands .
On August 29, 1885, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck authorized the creation of the German Protectorate of the Marshall Islands.
On October 13, 1885, the German corvette Nautilus docked at Jaluit to obtain the signatures of iroij on a treaty of protection.
On October 15, iroij Kabua , Loiak, Nelu, Lagajime, and Launa signed a treaty in German and Marshallese.
While the Marshallese text made no distinction of rank between the five chiefs, the German text recognized Kabua as the King of the Marshall Islands, despite the ongoing dispute between Kabua and Loiak over the paramount chieftainship .
A company of marines hoisted the flag of the German Empire over Jaluit, and the Nautilus performed similar ceremonies at seven other atolls in the Marshalls, obtaining the signatures of 18 iroij, most of whom were trading partners of Hernsheim.
The language of the treaty framed the creation of protectorate as a request from the iroij to seek defense from colonization by other western powers and to continue German trade.
Several pro-American iroij refused to recognize the German authority until threatened with naval force in mid-1886.
German colonial administration building at Jaluit Atoll in 1886.
Wilhelm Knappe , the first Imperial Governor , stands on the left.
In April 1886, the Reichstag passed a law to create a legal foundation for colonial protectorates, giving the kaiser and his appointed governor the authority to make laws by ordinance which did not necessarily have to follow the imperial constitution.
In September 1886, an imperial ordinance established the Protectorate of the Marshall Islands, and declared that German consular law would apply to all residents of the Marshall Islands, including indigenous Marshallese.
The ordinance also gave the German chancellor the discretionary authority to apply extraconstitutional ordinances to the Marshallese.
Following the 1886 Anglo-German Declarations , Nauru fell within the German sphere of influence in Western Pacific and was incorporated into the Marshall Islands protectorate on April 16, 1888.
The Jaluit Company
Bismarck planned to leave the administration of colonies to chartered companies rather than having the German government directly administer overseas protectorates.
Hernsheim Co. and DHPG both initially opposed administering the colony, but relented to the German government in December 1887 and merged their interests to create the joint-stock Jaluit Company .
The new company began administering the colony in January 1888.
The company had the right to be consulted on all new laws and ordinances and nominated all colonial administrative staff, subject to approval by the German chancellor.
The protectorate's administrative staff consisted of a governor , a secretary, and six colonial police officers.
The company was responsible for paying administrative expenses for the protectorate, and collected commercial license fees and an annual poll tax .
The taxation system was built upon the precolonial tribute system; iroij collected the taxes in copra on the company's behalf and were entitled to one-third of the sum total.
The Jaluit Company was the longest-lasting and most profitable German colonial joint-stock company.
Profit margins rose from 5% in 1892 to 12% in 1900 and 20% in 1906.
The company's licensing fees pushed out American and British competition; Crawford Co. and Henderson Macfarlane sold their holdings to the Jaluit Company in 1893 and 1899, respectively.
After acquiring the trading stations of the British Pacific Islands Company in 1901, the Jaluit Company held a monopoly in the region.
Australian firm Burns, Philp Co. complained that the harbor fees it paid in Marshallese ports were excessive, and the British government protested the Jaluit Company's practices as a violation of the Anglo-German Declarations' free-trade provision.
On March 31, 1906, the German government assumed direct control and reorganized the Marshall Islands and Nauru as part of the protectorate of German New Guinea .
As compensation, the Jaluit Company received a 10% share of Pacific Phosphate Company, which began mining operations on Nauru that year.
The company generated the largest dividends of any German company in the Pacific through the phosphate trade, rising from 30% in 1907 to 84% in 1913.
Even after the monopoly ended, the company continued to dominate the Micronesian copra trade.
Life in the protectorate Marshallese women in the 1880s wearing traditional jaki-ed woven mats and western-style dresses The gastwirtschaft Germania at Jabor , Jaluit
During the protectorate period, most islanders could read and write the Marshallese language and do arthimetic.
In 1898, 25 mission schools operated in the islands and had 1,300 students.
The German Catholic Missionaries of the Sacred Heart arrived at Jaluit in 1899, and while few Marshallese converted to Catholicism, the Catholic schools on Jaluit, Arno, and Likiep generated high demand.
While Protestant missionary schools provided a three-year education, the Catholic schools gave six to eight years, including lessons in the German language.
German accounts from the protectorate period note that aspects of pre-colonial Marshallese culture were being lost in all but the remote northern atolls with little missionary influence.
Most women wore smocks or dresses instead of going bare chested and wearing skirts made from woven jaki-ed mats.
Few men continued the practice of wearing their hair in a topknot.
Traditional crafts such as sharkskin drums and stick charts fell out of use as western products because more readily available.
In 1900, Marshallese commoners staged a general strike to demand higher pay from the Jaluit Company.
The iroij pressured most laborers to return to work, but church groups on Mejit and Namdrik organized staunch resistance to the company.
The company lowered its buying price for copra from the islands, which led the islanders to cease production altogether.
The German authorities arrested seven leaders of the strike and blockaded the islands from 1901 to 1904.
The islanders held out, and the company doubled wages in 1904.
Marshallese dockworkers on Jaluit staged a similarly successful strike in 1911 to double their wages.
The Marshallese population declined by more than 30% during the protectorate period, from 13,000-15,000 prior to annexation to 9,200 in 1908.
A 1905 typhoon killed approximately 200 people on Jaluit, Arno, and Mili.
Hundreds of islanders died in continued outbreaks of western diseases, such as dysentery outbreaks on Ebon which killed 150 people in 1907 and 400 in 1908.
The western population remained small throughout the protectorate period.
Approximately 180 westerners lived in the Marshall Islands in 1914, including 76 Germans.
Japanese mandate Ships in the port of Jabor , Jaluit Atoll, 1932
At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the United Kingdom and Empire of Japan were allies .
Britain initially declined Japanese offers of naval assistance against Germany, because the British government wanted to prevent Japanese southward expansion into the Pacific.
However, on August 7, the British Foreign Office requested that Japan help track down and destroy the German East Asia Squadron following reports of attacks on British ships.
The request provided a pretext for the Imperial Japanese Navy to invade Germany's Pacific colonies in Micronesia and Shandong .
Japanese troops under Admiral Yamaya Tanin arrived at Enewetak on September 29, 1914, and Jaluit on September 30.
An occupation force of three officers and 100 Japanese troops were stationed on Jaluit on October 3.
In October, the British and Japanese governments agreed that Japan would be responsible for operations north of the equator, while British, Australian and New Zealander forces operated south of the equator.
The agreement placed most of German Micronesia under Japanese military control, while Nauru came under British control.
In February 1917, the British and Japanese made a secret agreement that Japan would annex Micronesia after the Allied Powers won the war.
Japan later made similar agreements with France, Italy, and Russia.
In January 1919, Japanese delegate Makino Nobuaki proposed that Japan annex Germany's Pacific island colonies at the Paris Peace Conference .
United States President Woodrow Wilson opposed the annexation of German colonies by the Allied Powers and argued for a system of League of Nations mandates .
The Australian delegates opposed Wilson's proposal, and the conference adopted a compromise under which mandates would be divided into classes based on size and level of development.
Germany's Pacific colonies north of the equator became the Japanese South Seas Mandate , a Class C mandate, which due to small size, sparse population, remoteness, and low level of development was to be governed under Japanese laws as if it were an integral part of Japanese territory.
Germany ceded the Marshall Islands to Japan with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919.
In August 1919, a commission determined that mandates were also not to be militarized and that Japan was not to continue expanding its territory further into the Pacific.
The United States government and military opposed Japanese annexation of Germany's Micronesian colonies and were suspicious of a secret Japanese military build up in Micronesia.
The government recruited some of the few American scientists in Micronesia to gather strategic information.
In 1921, geologist William Herbert Hobbs gathered intelligence while on an expedition to collect coral and volcanic samples in the Marshall Islands.
In 1922 and 1923, American intelligence officer Earl Hancock Ellis posed as a commercial traveler and undertook a reconnaissance tour of Micronesia, including several months the Marshall Islands.
Administration South Seas Government branch office, Jaluit, c. 1932
In December 1914, the Japanese military created the Provisional South Seas Defense Force to administer Micronesia from its command post at Truk Atoll .
The military administration divided Micronesia into six naval districts, each governed by a commander : the central Carolines , governed from Truk; the eastern Carolines, governed from Ponape ; the Marianas , governed from Saipan ; the Marshalls, governed from Jaluit; Palau , governed from Koror ; and Yap .
The administration had orders to initially retain as many German-era laws as possible to enable a smooth transition to Japanese rule, though Japanese laws replaced German laws in 1915.
The Japanese initially requested that German officials continue to work on behalf of the Japanese occupation, but later reversed course and deported most German settlers and officials in June 1915.
The military government implemented an embargo on most foreign ships, including those of its allies, from anchoring at harbors in the Marshall Islands.
Non-Japanese foreigners needed to file a multi-step application to visit the islands with no guarantee that the government would grant permission.
International mail service to Micronesia halted from 1914 to 1917 and resumed after the Anglo-Japanese secret agreement that Japan would retain the territories it had occupied after the war.
During the first months of the occupation, Japanese scientists, agricultural researchers, medical specialists and other experts and scholars conducted an extensive survey of German Micronesia to assess the islands' economic potential.
The survey's final report to the Japanese government suggested that the islands' primary value was strategic, because they could enable future southward expansion.
In other parts of Micronesia the Japanese undertook novel development initiatives, but the Marshall Islands had the most limited economic potential in Micronesia.
The Japanese adopted the German system of having local iroij collect a poll tax in copra .
The Japanese navy garrisons withdrew from Micronesia and closed their headquarters at Truk in 1921, and the civilian South Seas Government ( 南洋廳 , Nan'yō-chō ) led by Toshiro Tezuka set up its headquarters in Koror, Palau, in April 1922.
The Marshall Islands were one of six branch governments of the civil administration, and the administrative center of the district remained in Jaluit.
The South Seas Government reported directly to the Prime Minister of Japan until 1929, when the government came under the authority of the Ministry of Colonial Affairs .