Federated States of Micronesia

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Federated States of Micronesia spreads across the western Pacific just north of the equator, its 607 islands strung over almost 2700 km. Its total land adds up to roughly 702 km2, an area you could lose inside a single mid-sized city. Yet its ocean tells a different story. The country's waters fill nearly 3 million km2 of the Pacific, giving it the 14th-largest exclusive economic zone in the world. The capital, Palikir, sits on Pohnpei Island. The largest city, Weno, is an island municipality inside the Chuuk Lagoon. Four states make up the federation, running west to east: Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Kosrae. How did such scattered specks of land become one nation? Why does a country this small command an ocean this vast? And what survives on islands that lie 3,400 km from Japan and some 4000 km from Honolulu? The answers run through ancient stone cities, a chain of foreign rulers, and a population that still speaks more than a dozen languages.

• 2. City Of Stone And Canals

  ›

  Nan Madol rises on the eastern edge of Pohnpei, a cluster of small artificial islands joined by a network of canals. People often call it the Venice of the Pacific. For centuries it served as the ceremonial and political seat of the Saudeleur dynasty. That dynasty united Pohnpei's estimated 25,000 people from about AD 500 until 1500, when the centralized system collapsed. The ancestors of the Micronesians had settled the region more than four thousand years ago. A decentralized chieftain-based system slowly gave way to a more centralized economic and religious culture, which once centered on Yap Island. Today Nan Madol carries the full name Nan Madol: Ceremonial Centre of Eastern Micronesia and holds status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The site is currently listed as In Danger due to natural causes, and the government is working on its conservation.

• 3. A Procession Of Empires

  ›

  European explorers reached the Carolines in the sixteenth century, first the Portuguese searching for the Spice Islands and then the Spanish. The Treaty of Tordesillas assigned these lands to Spain, which folded the archipelago into the Spanish East Indies through its capital at Manila. In the 19th century the Spanish built several outposts and missions. In 1887 they founded the town of Santiago de la Ascensión, on the site of present-day Kolonia on Pohnpei. Germany began extending its reach into the Caroline Islands in the 1870s, a push that produced the Carolines Question of 1885. Pope Leo XIII was asked to rule on whether Germany or Spain held authority over the islands. The decision confirmed Spanish authority but granted Germany free access. After its defeat in the Spanish-American War, Spain sold the archipelago to Germany in 1899 under the German-Spanish Treaty of 1899, and Germany folded it into German New Guinea. A few remote islands, notably Kapingamarangi, went unnamed in the treaty, an oversight unnoticed until the late 1940s. During World War I, Japan captured the islands. The League of Nations later granted Japan a mandate to administer them as part of the South Seas Mandate.

• 4. Hailstone In The Lagoon

  ›

  Truk Lagoon served as a major base for the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. In February 1944, the U.S. Navy launched Operation Hailstone, a massive air and surface attack on that lagoon. Over two days, U.S. carrier aircraft and surface vessels struck Japanese warships, merchant vessels, and shore installations. The attack sank numerous ships and destroyed hundreds of aircraft, sharply reducing Japan's naval strength in the Pacific. After the war, the islands of Micronesia passed to the United States as part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. The arrangement was formalized on the 2nd of April 1947 through United Nations Security Council Resolution 21, which approved the terms of trusteeship for the Pacific Islands formerly under Japanese mandate.

• 5. Becoming A Nation

  ›

  On the 10th of May 1979, four of the Trust Territory districts ratified a new constitution to become the Federated States of Micronesia. Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands chose not to join. The FSM signed a Compact of Free Association with the United States, which entered into force on the 3rd of November 1986. That marked the country's move from trusteeship to independence. Independence was formally settled under international law in 1990, when the United Nations ended the trusteeship through Security Council Resolution 683. The Compact was renewed in 2004. The country took its seat at the United Nations following the Security Council's recommendation on the 9th of August 1991, in Resolution 703, and the General Assembly's approval on the 17th of September 1991, in Resolution 46/2. The 1979 constitution still governs the nation. Its unicameral Congress has fourteen members elected by popular vote. Four senators, one from each state, serve four-year terms, while the remaining ten represent single-member districts based on population and serve two-year terms. Congress elects the President and Vice President from among the four state-based senators, and there are no formal political parties. In February 2021, a bitter leadership dispute over Henry Puna's election as the Pacific Islands Forum's secretary-general led the FSM to begin withdrawing from the Forum. In June 2022, the Suva Agreement was reached and the country agreed to remain.

• 6. An Ocean For Sale

  ›

  Economic life in the Federated States of Micronesia rests mainly on subsistence farming and fishing. The islands hold few mineral deposits worth exploiting, except for high-grade phosphate. Long line tuna fishing is viable, carried out by foreign vessels from China that operated in the 1990s. A tourist industry remains a possibility, but the remoteness of the location and a lack of adequate facilities hold it back. Financial assistance from the United States is the primary source of revenue. The U.S. pledged to spend $1.3 billion in the islands across 1986-2001, and when the Compact was amended in 2004 it committed $110 million in development aid through 2023. That free association also shapes daily life. The United States is wholly responsible for the country's defense, while the FSM National Police operates a Maritime Wing Unit. The Compact lets FSM citizens join the U.S. military without obtaining U.S. permanent residency or citizenship, and allows Micronesians to immigrate and work in the United States. The country maintains foreign relations with 56 countries, including the Holy See and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. In February 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it severed diplomatic relations with Russia and called the invasion "unjustified and brutal".

• 7. Rain, Reefs, And Rare Sight

  ›

  Mount Nahnalaud rises only 750 m above Pohnpei, yet it receives an average of 10,160 mm of rain, ranking it among the rainiest places on earth, with almost always overcast skies. The country has a tropical rainforest climate, warm, humid, and rainy all year, tempered by constant trade winds. Minimum temperatures stay between 22 and 25 °C and maximums between 30 and 32 °C, while precipitation ranges from 2500 to 5000 mm per year and can pass 6000 mm on wind-facing slopes. The driest months, January and February, still bring no less than 250 mm of rain. This climate helps make the FSM a biodiversity hotspot, home to roughly 3,025 animal species and 1,553 plant species. Early Micronesians and later settlers introduced over 457 plant species, and the country now holds 58 Key Biodiversity Areas. The same isolation that breeds wildlife also concentrates rare human traits. On the atoll of Pingelap in Pohnpei State, about 5% of the roughly 3,000 inhabitants live with an extreme form of color blindness called achromatopsia, known locally as maskun.

• 8. Stone Money And Many Tongues

  ›

  Yap is famous for its "stone money", the large calcite disks known as Rai stones, some up to 4 m across, each with a hole in the middle. Roughly 6,500 of them lie scattered around the island, and owners often leave them in place even when ownership changes. There are five major types, Mmbul, Gaw, Ray, Yar, and Reng, with Reng the smallest at only 30 cm in diameter. Their worth rests on size and history, with many carried from other islands as far as New Guinea and most arriving in ancient times from Palau. The country's people carry many tongues and faiths. English is the official and common language, but Austronesian languages dominate at home, led by Chuukese with 45,900 speakers, then Pohnpeian with 30,000. The population is 97% Christian, more than half Catholic at 55% and about 42% Protestant, a legacy of Spanish and German colonial rule. Literature has been slower to emerge. In 2008, Emelihter Kihleng became the first Micronesian to publish a collection of poetry in the English language.