The Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme was begun in 1938 in the western Pacific ocean and was the last attempt at human colonisation within the British Empire.
Conceived by Henry E. "Harry" Maude, lands commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, and approved by Sir Harry Luke, high commissioner of the western Pacific in Fiji, its goal was to reduce overpopulation in the southern Gilbert Islands by developing three mostly uninhabited atolls in the Phoenix Islands archipelago:
- Nikumaroro (Gardner)
- Manra Island (Sydney)
- Orona Atoll (Hull)
A secondary goal was to enhance the British presence in the western Pacific in response to growing American influence through the Guano Islands Act, especially on Canton (later Kanton), where a commercial seaplane base was being established.
The three atolls, Sydney, Hull and Gardner were renamed in Gilbertese as Manra Island, Orona Atoll and Nikumaroro respectively. Colonization efforts by Gilbertese settlers were almost immediately hampered by the onset of World War II, the islands' isolation and the 1941 death on Nikumaroro of the project's officer in charge, 29 year old civil servant Gerald Gallagher. After 1945 the three settlements continued to struggle with supply problems, limited markets for copra, the settlements' only major product, and drought, until the British government determined the colony could not be self-sustaining and evacuated the settlers in 1963, ending the project. The Phoenix Islands are part of Kiribati and in 2005 were officially uninhabited except for a few families on Kanton Island (census population 61 in 2000 and 41 in 2005).
Famous quotes containing the words phoenix, islands, settlement and/or scheme:
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This hearse that must bless
With aromatic gums
That cost great sums,
The way of thurification
To make a fumigation,
Sweet of reflare,
And redolent of air,”
—John Skelton (1460?–1529)
“Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Settlement ... is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city. It insists that these problems are not confined to any one portion of the city. It is an attempt to relieve, at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other ...”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)