About this site
What this is
FSM History tells the modern history of the Federated States of Micronesia, from the 1820s to today, for students, teachers, families at home and abroad, and researchers.
How it was made
Every fact on the site comes from a published source and links to it. Sources were checked against one another, and foreign-language records in Spanish, German, Japanese, French and Russian were translated and compared. Where sources disagree, the site shows both values and says which is better supported. Rows marked “weak source” rest on a thin or single secondary source.
The written record leans heavily toward Pohnpei and toward what foreign ships, missions and governments wrote down. Island pages say where the record is thin. Oral history, family knowledge and local records would make this history fuller and more accurate.
Corrections and additions
If you know something is wrong or missing, especially from oral history or local records, please send it with your source.
Languages
The site is in English for now and is built so that Pohnpeian, Chuukese, Kosraean and Yapese versions can be added.
Image credits
Six of the ten chapters open with an archival image. Each is in the public domain or free to reuse, and each is credited below. The site shows them in two tones to match its colours; select an image on its chapter page to open the untinted file. The other chapters have no image yet: none was found that is both free to use and right to show.
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Ornaments and instruments of the Caroline Islanders, drawn by Aleksandr Postels on the Russian corvette Seniavin’s voyage of 1826–29: combs, necklaces, an ear ornament, tattooing instruments and a conch used as a trumpet. Detail of plate 30.
A. Postels and P. F. Lehnert, “Ornements et instruments des habitants des îles Carolines”, pl. 30, in Voyage autour du monde … sur la corvette Le Séniavine, sous le commandement de Frédéric Lutké (Paris: Engelmann, 1831–1839). National Library of Russia, via World Digital Library / Library of Congress.
“A Paliker fishing-canoe”: a Palikir canoe on Pohnpei, photographed in the 1890s and published in 1899.
F. W. Christian, The Caroline Islands: Travel in the Sea of the Little Lands (New York: Scribner’s, 1899), plate facing p. 70. Photographer not named. Internet Archive, from Boston University School of Theology Library.
“Gruss aus Yap” (Greetings from Yap): a German-language picture postcard of the colonial years, printed by C. Jacobsen’s Kunstanstalt in Altenburg, 1900–1911. It was kept in the album of Albert Ellis of the Pacific Phosphate Company.
Gruss aus Yap, 1900–1911. From the Albert Ellis Ocean Island Photograph Album. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, O.027857.
The U Public School on Pohnpei, before 1936, in a photograph the US Navy reproduced in its 1944 civil affairs handbook.
Civil Affairs Handbook: East Caroline Islands (OPNAV P22-5), Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Navy, 21 February 1944, p. 207, fig. 36 (original caption: “U Public School, Ponape (prior to 1936)”). Original photographer not credited. Internet Archive.
Vice Admiral Chuichi Hara, commander of Japan’s 4th Fleet, signs the surrender of the base at Truk (Chuuk) aboard USS Portland, 2 September 1945.
U.S. Navy photograph NH 62802, Naval History and Heritage Command (Collection of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz), via the HyperWar mirror of the Naval Historical Center Online Library.
Public domain (US Navy photograph, 17 U.S.C. § 105) Source record
Proclamation 5564, printed in the Federal Register on 7 November 1986, put the Compact of Free Association with the FSM into full force as of 3 November 1986 and declared that the Trusteeship Agreement no longer applied to the FSM.
Proclamation 5564, 51 Fed. Reg. 40399 (7 November 1986). National Archives, Office of the Federal Register.
Public domain (US federal government work, 17 U.S.C. § 105) Source record
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