Guadalcanal
Guadalcanal (/ˌɡwɑːdəlkəˈnæl/; indigenous name: Isatabu) is the principal island in Guadalcanal Province of Solomon Islands, located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, northeast of Australia. It is the largest island in the Solomons by area and the second-largest by population (after Malaita). The island is mainly covered in dense tropical rainforest and has a mountainous hinterland.
This article is about the island in Solomon Islands. For other uses, see Guadalcanal (disambiguation).
Native name: Isatabu
5,302 km2 (2,047 sq mi)
2,335 m (7661 ft)
Honiara (pop. 92,344 (2021)
161,197 (2021)
30.4/km2 (78.7/sq mi)
- Melanesian 93%
- Polynesian 4%
- Micronesian 1.5%
- European 0.8%
- Chinese 0.3%
- others 0.4%
Guadalcanal was first charted by Westerners during the Spanish expedition of Álvaro de Mendaña in 1568. The name comes from the village of Guadalcanal, in the province of Seville, in Andalusia, Spain, birthplace of Pedro de Ortega Valencia, a member of Mendaña's expedition.
During 1942 and 1943, it was the scene of the Guadalcanal campaign and saw bitter fighting between Japanese and U.S. troops. The Americans were ultimately victorious. At the end of World War II, Honiara, on the north coast of Guadalcanal, became the new capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate and later the capital of independent nation of Solomon Islands.
History[edit]
Early history[edit]
The island has been settled since at least 4500–2500 BC based on archaeological finds at Poha Cave and Vatuluma Posovi.[1][2] During the period 1200-800 BC, Austronesian Lapita peoples settled the islands.[1]
A Spanish expedition from Peru in 1568 under the command of Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira were the first Europeans to see the island. Mendaña's subordinate, Pedro de Ortega Valencia, named the island after his home town Guadalcanal in Andalusia, Spain.[3] In the years that followed the discovery, the island was variously referred to as Guadarcana, Guarcana, Guadalcana, and Guadalcanar, which reflected different pronunciations of its name in Andalusian Spanish.
European settlers, whalers, and missionaries began to arrive in the 18th and 19th centuries. With these outsiders also arrived foreign institutions such as forced labour. Beginning during the 1860s, about 60,000 natives from many parts of the Solomon Islands were indentured and sent to Australia or Fiji by British authorities to work on plantations. This system continued into the 1890s.[4] In the 1880s, the Germans and the British vied for control of the Solomons. Germany established a protectorate over the northern Solomons in 1884, while in 1893, the British Solomon Islands Protectorate was proclaimed, which included the island of Guadalcanal.[3][4] Germany eventually handed over most of their protectorate to Britain, though, in 1899. By the early 20th century, large agricultural plantations (specialising in copra), run mainly by Australians, were established in the region. Guadalcanal was not seriously affected by World War I.[4] In 1932, the British confirmed the name Guadalcanal in line with the town in Andalusia, Spain.
Fauna[edit]
The island hosts a native marsupial known as the phalanger or grey cuscus, Phalanger orientalis.[10] The only other mammals are bats and rodents.
Many species of colourful parrots are found there, and estuarine crocodiles inhabit the island's shores. In recent times, these crocodiles have been found only on the Weather Coast in the south of the island, but during World War II, they were found along the north coast in the vicinity of the airstrip where the fighting was taking place, as evidenced by names such as Alligator Creek.
Venomous snakes are rare on the island and are not considered to be a serious threat, but a kind of centipede there has a particularly nasty bite. These centipedes were well known to the American Marines during the war as "Jeremiah Robinson".
The Guadalcanal Watersheds form a site that has been identified by BirdLife International as an important bird area, because it supports populations of threatened or endemic bird species. At 376,146 ha (1,452 sq mi), it covers some 70% of the island, extending along the southern coast inland to the central highlands, and contains riverine and lowland tropical rainforest, as well as the greatest contiguous area of cloud forest in the Solomons. Although it also contains gardens and old village sites, most of it has never been permanently inhabited. Significant birds for which the site was identified include chestnut-bellied imperial pigeons, Woodford's rails, Guadalcanal moustached kingfishers, Meek's lorikeets, Guadalcanal honeyeaters, Guadalcanal thicketbirds, and Guadalcanal thrushes. Potential threats to the site include logging and invasive species.[11]