Territory of New Guinea - World War I To League of Nations Mandate

World War I To League of Nations Mandate

One of the first actions of Australia’s armed forces during World War I was the seizure by the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force of German New Guinea and the neighbouring islands of the Bismarck Archipelago in October 1914. Germany administered several territories in the south and central Pacific which the British requested be captured by Australian and New Zealand forces. On 11 September 1914, a Royal Australian Navy force arrived off Rabaul with the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force and naval troops were landed at Herbertshohe and Kabakaul to search for German radio stations, facing some minor German resistance. Rabaul was occupied, unopposed, on 12 September. The German administration surrendered German New Guinea on 17 September. Australian troops and vessels were subsequently dispatched to occupy Germany's other territories including the New Guinea mainland, New Ireland, the Admiralty Islands, the Western Islands, Bougainville, and the German Solomons. The colony remained under Australian military control until 1921.

At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference following the war, Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes sought to secure possession of New Guinea from the defeated German Empire: telling the Conference: ""Strategically the northern islands (such as New Guinea) encompass Australia like fortresses. They are as necessary to Australia as water to a city."

Article 22 of the Treaty of Versailles provided for the division of Germany and the Central Powers' imperial possessions among the victorious Allies of World War I. In the Pacific, Japan gained Germany’s islands north of the equator (the Marshall Islands, the Caroline Islands, the Marianas Islands, the Palau Islands) and Kiautschou in China. German Samoa was assigned to New Zealand; German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and Nauru to Australia as League of Nations Mandates: territories "formerly governed and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world". Article 22 said:

The British Government, on behalf of Australia, assumed a mandate from the League of Nations for governing the Territory in 1920. This mandate was administered by the Australian Government until the outbreak of the Pacific War and Japanese invasion in December 1941 brought about its suspension.