Papua New Guinea (PNG), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island nation in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia. It has a land border with Indonesia to the west and maritime borders with Australia to the south and the Solomon Islands to the east. Its capital is Port Moresby. The country's 462,840 km2 (178,700 mi2) includes a large mainland and hundreds of islands.
The eastern half of New Guinea was divided in 1884 between German New Guinea in the north and British New Guinea in the south, with the latter ceded to Australia in 1902 and reorganised as the Territory of Papua. Australia occupied German New Guinea during World War I and then administered the territory as a League of Nations mandate. The nation was the site of fierce fighting during the New Guinea campaign of World War II, following which the two territories were united in 1949. Papua New Guinea was granted independence as a Commonwealth realm in 1975. Representing the monarch is a governor-general. Politics take place within a Westminster system, with the government led by a prime minister. Members of the National Parliament, the unicameral legislative body, also serve as provincial leaders.
The population is mostly rural, with only 14% living in urban centres in 2023. The persistence of traditional communities and lifestyles is explicitly protected by the Papua New Guinea Constitution. While official population estimates suggest the population is around 11.8 million, estimates using satellite data put the number closer to 17 million. The population is extremely diverse. There are 840 known spoken languages, making it the most linguistically diverse country in the world. Cultural practices are similarly diverse. Many cultural and linguistic groups are small, although English and Tok Pisin serve as common languages. This diversity has led to friction, especially in politics, and the government has struggled to combat violence against women. The country has a large Christian majority population, of several different denominations, and in March 2025 its constitution was amended to adopt Christianity as the official state religion.
The rural and diverse population is a result of highly mountainous geography. The land supports around 5% of all known species, and the export-driven economy is also dependent on natural resources. Papua New Guinea is a developing economy where nearly 40% of the population are subsistence farmers living relatively independently of the cash economy. The country retains close ties to Australia and has enhanced ties with both Asia and the Pacific.
Etymology
"Papua" is derived from a local term of uncertain origin that may have referred to at least part of the island now called New Guinea. In 1526 Portuguese explorer Jorge de Menezes named the island Ilhas dos Papuas. The Australian government adopted the name "Territory of Papua" when it assumed control of British New Guinea in 1902, which Prime Minister Edmund Barton considered a "shorter and better name" for the territory.
"New Guinea" (Nueva Guinea) was coined by Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez. In 1545, he noted the resemblance of the people to those he had earlier seen along the Guinea coast of Africa. Guinea, in its turn, is etymologically derived from the Portuguese word Guiné. The name is one of several toponyms sharing similar etymologies, which likely mean "of the burnt face" or similar, in reference to the dark skin of the inhabitants. Its use in the country name comes from the Territory of New Guinea, the name adopted for German New Guinea when it became a League of Nations mandate under Australian administration.
The hyphenated form "Papua-New Guinea" was adopted by the Papua‑New Guinea Provisional Administration Act 1945, after previous use to refer to the two Australian-administered territories. The name "Territory of Papua and New Guinea" was used following formal administrative union in 1949. Beginning in the 1960s, there was considerable debate around whether the territory should adopt a new name upon independence. The indigenised name "Niugini" won a 1968 competition held by the South Pacific Post and was adopted by several nationalist groups, while "Pagini" was favoured by a parliamentary committee into constitutional development. In 1971, the House of Assembly renamed the territory "Papua New Guinea", which was retained upon independence.
History
First settlement
Archaeological evidence indicates that modern humans first arrived in what became New Guinea and Australia, as well as the Bismarck Archipelago, around 42,000 to 45,000 years ago. Bougainville Island was settled by around 28,000 years ago, and the more distant Manus Island by around 20,000 years ago. These were part of the earliest migrations of humans from Africa, and the resulting populations remained relatively isolated from the rest of the world throughout prehistory. Rising sea levels isolated New Guinea from Australia about 10,000 years ago, although Aboriginal Australians and New Guineans had already diverged from each other from about 37,000 years ago.
Agriculture was independently developed in the New Guinea highlands around 7000 BC, making it one of the few areas in the world where people independently domesticated plants. Before the onset of full-scale agriculture, some plants had already been domesticated, including sago, Canarium indicum, and karuka. Archaeological evidence shows that Austronesian-speaking peoples of the Lapita culture reached the Bismarck Archipelago by 3,300 years ago. It is unknown whether they also settled on the mainland at this time, but there is strong evidence of their presence in coastal areas from around 500 BC. These communities interacted with larger trade networks. It is likely through these trading networks that banana and sugarcane moved from New Guinea to other areas of the world.
Trade became rarer around 300 AD, as demand for goods shifted to the Maluku Islands and Timor. After European interest in the region grew in the 16th century, Dutch influence grew over the Sultanate of Tidore. As Dutch authorities become more interested in New Guinea, they confirmed and extended the sultanate's claims over western New Guinea. Renewed trade began to spread to the eastern parts of New Guinea in the late 17th century, driven by demand for goods such as dammar gum, sea cucumbers, pearls, copra, shells, and bird-of-paradise feathers.
On New Guinea, communities were economically linked through trading networks. Despite this, aside from some political alliances, each community functioned largely independently, relying on subsistence agriculture. Goods were often traded along established chains, and some villagers would be familiar with and sometimes know the languages of the immediately neighbouring villages (although language by itself was not a marker of political allegiance). Some wider trading networks existed in maritime areas. While people did not move far along these routes, goods moved long distances through local exchanges, and cultural practices likely diffused along them. Despite these links, the creation of larger political entities under European rule had no precedent, and in many cases brought together communities that historically had antagonistic relationships, or no relationship at all.
European influence
It is likely that some ships from China and Southeast Asia visited the island at times and that there was some contact with New Guinean communities. Portuguese explorer António de Abreu was the first European to discover the island of New Guinea. Portuguese traders introduced the South American sweet potato to the Moluccas. From there, it likely spread to New Guinea sometime in the 17th or 18th century, initially from the southern coast. It spread inland to the highlands and became a staple food. The introduction of the sweet potato, possibly alongside other agricultural changes, transformed traditional agriculture and societies. This likely led to the spread of the big man social structure. Sweet potato largely supplanted the previous staple, taro, and led to significant population growth in the highlands.
By the 19th century, there was some trade with the Dutch East Indies. Beginning in the 1860s, people from New Guinea were effectively taken as slaves to Queensland and Fiji as part of the blackbirding trade. This was stopped in 1884. Most of those taken were from coastal Papua. Those who returned to New Guinea brought their experiences with Western culture with them, but the largest impact was the development of a Melanesian Pidgin that would eventually become the Tok Pisin language.
Christianity was introduced on 15 September 1847 when a group of Marist missionaries went to Woodlark Island. Missions were the primary source of Western culture as well as religion. The western half of the island was annexed by the Netherlands in 1848. The nearby Torres Strait Islands were annexed by Queensland in 1878, and Queensland attempted to annex some of New Guinea in 1883. The eastern half was divided between Germany in the north and the United Kingdom in the south in 1884. The German New Guinea Company had initially tried to develop plantations, but when this was not successful began to engage in barter trade. In the British area, gold was found near the Mambare River in 1895.
In 1888, the British protectorate was annexed by Britain. In 1902, Papua was effectively transferred to the authority of the newly federated British dominion of Australia. With the passage of the Papua Act 1905, the area was officially renamed the Territory of Papua, and the Australian administration became formal in 1906, with Papua becoming fully annexed as an Australian territory.
Under European rule, social relations amongst the New Guinean population changed. Tribal fighting decreased, while in new urban areas there was greater mixing as people moved to partake in the cash crop economy. The large inequality between colonial administrators and locals led to the emergence of what colonial governments called cargo cults. One of the most significant impacts was to changes in local travel. Colonial authorities outlawed tribal warfare, and it became normal to move for work, while roads increased the connectivity between inland areas.
Colonial authorities generally worked with individual village representatives, although neither German nor British authorities developed an effective system of indirect rule. In German New Guinea Tok Pisin began to spread through local adoption and was reluctantly used by German authorities. In areas under British and then Australian governance, Hiri Motu, a pidgin version of the Motu language, became established as a de facto official language.
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Australian forces captured German New Guinea and occupied it throughout the war. After the end of the war, the League of Nations authorised Australia to administer this area as a Class "C" League of Nations mandate territory from 9 May 1921, which became the Territory of New Guinea. The Territory of Papua and the Mandate of New Guinea were administered separately. Gold was discovered in Bulolo in the 1920s, and prospectors searched other areas of the island. The highland valleys were explored by prospectors in the 1930s and were found to be inhabited by over a million people.
World War II and Australian rule
During World War II, Japanese forces sought to capture Port Moresby, invading overland in mid-1942 and moving south in the Kokoda Track campaign. Australian forces carried out rearguard actions as they withdrew almost to Port Moresby. In September an Australian counter-offensive began, and Japanese forces fought rearguard actions as they retreated north. Australian forces were supported during this campaign through significant contributions from local soldiers and helpers. While this campaign was ongoing, the Japanese launched the Battle of Milne Bay, where their attack was repulsed by Australian and American forces. These events, along with the nearby Guadalcanal campaign, marked a turning point in the Pacific War. A war of attrition continued until 1944, when allied forces fully recaptured Papua and New Guinea. In total, the New Guinea campaign resulted in the deaths of approximately 216,000 Japanese, Australian, and U.S. servicemen on both the mainland and offshore islands.
During the war, the civil government of both territories was suspended and replaced by a joint military government. The Second World War punctured the myth of differences between locals and foreigners and increased the exposure of the population to the wider world and modern social and economic ideas. It also led to significant population movements, beginning the establishment of a common identity shared by those in the two Australian-ruled territories. Both Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu became more common to facilitate communication and were used for radio broadcasts. The war was the first time Tok Pisin became widely spread in Papua. The joint governance of both territories that was established during the war was continued after the war ended.
In 1946, New Guinea was declared a United Nations trust territory under Australian governance. In 1949 Papuans became Australian citizens, and Australia formally combined Papua and New Guinea into the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. The Legislative Council of Papua and New Guinea was created in November 1951. Village councils were first created in both Papua and in New Guinea starting 1949, with the number steadily increasing over the years. These created alternative power structures, which while sometimes filled by traditional leaders, saw the beginning of a shift towards leaders with administrative or business experience.
The political aims of Australian rule were uncertain, with independence and becoming an Australian state both seen as possible futures. The 1960s and 1970s saw significant social changes as more of the population began to participate in the formal economy, leading to the development of a more local bureaucracy. Alongside this, Australian administrators promoted a shared national identity. English was introduced by Australian authorities as a potential unifying language, and many Papua New Guineans viewed it as a prestige language.