Glossary

The agreement under which the FSM governs itself and runs its own foreign relations, while the United States holds defense authority and provides grants. It entered into force on 3 November 1986 and has been renewed twice.

The territory-wide legislature created in 1964 that first met on 12 July 1965, now FSM Law Day. It trained the leaders who wrote the constitution.

Dried coconut meat, the main trade product of the islands from the trading-station era onward.

Yap’s councils of traditional chiefs, written into the Yap State constitution, which can review bills on grounds of custom.

The 1978 statement that set the terms of free association between Micronesia and the United States.

The arrangement under which Japan ruled the islands from 1920 as a Class C mandate, after the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

The civilian South Seas Government that ran the islands for Japan from 1 April 1922, with its seat at Koror and branch offices on Yap, Truk and Ponape.

Yap’s stone money, quarried in Palau. The trader David O’Keefe shipped it to Yap in exchange for copra from the 1870s.

Yap’s tribute and exchange system with the outer islands, which German officials ended.

The 1910–11 uprising of Sokehs, joined by Palikir, against German rule on Pohnpei, ending in executions and the exile of Sokehs people to Palau.

The UN trusteeship the United States ran from 1947. It was a “strategic” trust, so oversight sat with the Security Council, where the US holds a veto.

The label for the hands-off neglect of the Trust Territory in the 1950s.