British Solomon Islands

Common card · No. 357006

The British Solomon Islands Protectorate (BSIP) was a British protectorate in the South Pacific from 1893 to 1978, comprising most of the present-day country of Solomon Islands. The protectorate was first established in June 1893, when Captain Herbert Gibson of HMS Curacoa declared the southern Solomon Islands a British protectorate. Christian missionaries began visiting the Solomons from the 1840s, beginning with an attempt by French Catholics under Jean-Baptiste Epalle to establish a mission on Santa Isabel Island, which was abandoned after Epalle was killed by islanders in 1845. Anglican missionaries began arriving from the 1850s, followed by other denominations, over time gaining a large number of converts. The Anglo-German Declarations about the Western Pacific Ocean (1886), established "spheres of influence" that Imperial Germany and the United Kingdom agreed, with Germany giving up its claim to the southern Solomon Islands. Following the formal declaration of the Protectorate in...

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