HomeEras
Nine eras
Papua New Guinea history, period by period
From the first settlement of the island to the present. Start anywhere — each era page lists everything written on it, and the timeline puts the whole sequence on one page.
- to 1526
Before outside contact
Fifty thousand years of settlement, some of the earliest agriculture anywhere, and trade networks that moved goods across the region long before any outsider arrived.
- 1526–1883
First outside contact
Portuguese and Spanish sightings, the naming of the island, whalers and traders, and the labour trade that took Islanders to Queensland.
- 1884–1914
The colonial partition
Germany takes the north, Britain the south. British New Guinea becomes Papua, and in 1906 passes to the new Commonwealth of Australia.
- 1914–1941
The Mandate years
Australian occupation of German New Guinea, the League of Nations mandate, the goldfields, and first contact in the Highlands in the 1930s.
- 1942–1945
The Second World War
Rabaul, Kokoda, Milne Bay, Buna–Gona, Lae and Bougainville. The war that reached further into the country than the administration ever had.
- 1945–1975
Towards independence
Trusteeship, the Papua and New Guinea Act 1949, the House of Assembly, the Constitutional Planning Committee and self-government in 1973.
- 1975–1988
Independence
Sixteen September 1975, the home-grown Constitution, the first Somare governments and the shape of the new state.
- 1988–2001
The Bougainville conflict
Panguna, the ten-year conflict, the Sandline affair, the Bougainville Peace Agreement and the road to the 2019 referendum.
- 2001 onwards
Modern Papua New Guinea
Resource booms, LNG, changes of government, the courts, and a country whose institutions are now older than most of its population.