TNAG-0714-FCO40-910-Future-of-the-Dependent-Territories-1978 — Page 18

9.

the interests of Australian and N. Zealand planters there) refused this

glea.

a. With the growing prospect of French annexations in the area, the

state Victoria/government again appealed to HIG in 1881 to annex all the island

boween Fiji, New Guinea and the New Hebrides, but HMG again refused on

grounds of being satisfied with French assurances.

By 1887, however, largely because the German threat to us both had

now entered on the scene, France and Britain agreed to establish a joint

Naval Commission to police the area andook to effect no annexat-

ions in it. This arrangement developed, though only slowly as Anglo-Frend

relations long remained poor, into the New Hebrides Anglo-French Condom-

inium, which was formalized into an effective joint control and admin-

istration of the islands only after the restoration of good relations by

the Entente Cordiale of 1904. Such therefore was the origin and purpose

of the present New Hebrides regime.

in 1884

The German threat in the area, once started was (characteristic-

ally) much more real. She was already believed in Australia to have

designs on New Guinea as early as 1881 and the establishment of a colony

there. To corresponding Australian (Queensland) representations, HMG

disclaimed any ground for believing this, but in 1883 Queensland was

sufficiently convinced of the danger that she annexed New Guniea on her

own account, only to have it disowned by HMG. But in 1884 Germany did

annex the N.E. coastal area of New Guinea and also the group of islands

thereafter to its east named the Bismarck Archipelago, and in 1886 she declared a

virtual Protectorate over Samoa (which involved her in a virtual clash

with the United States' interests there and tempered her ambitions).

Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister, decided to take the

opportunity to reach as general a settlement as possible with Germany on all these issues and the very comprehensive Anglo-German Agreement of 18% settled many of these 'colonial' questions by agreement on mutual

spheres

of influence' in all these contested areas of the world. This included

the W. Pacifio which was appropriately delimited, and though a 'sphere of influence' was still a vague (and purely international) arrangement it did