Micronesia Map

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The only empire known to have originated in Micronesia was based in Yap. 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 the Spanish Philippines from 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:the United States, which took control of Guam following the Spanish-American War of 1898, and colonized Wake Island; Germany, which took Nauru and bought the Marshall, Caroline, and Northern Mariana Islands from Spain; and the British Empire, which took the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati).

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 branch of this family, and mostly to the Micronesian languages division within that branch; however, two exceptions are noted in western Micronesia, which are Western Malayo-Polynesian languages:Chamorro in the Mariana Islands, Palauan in Palau. These are apparently no more closely related to Micronesian languages than they are to languages of 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.

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 were 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, most of Micronesia consists of independent states, with the exceptions of Guam and Wake Island, which are U.S. territories, and the Northern Mariana Islands, which form a U.S. Commonwealth.

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, Polynesians, and Filipinos. 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.