In the aftermath of World War II, the newly formed United Nations placed a group of Pacific islands into a trustee ship that was to be administered by the United States.

After several decades, that trustee ship was dissolved, and it resulted in three independent countries,

one US territory and a unique system of international relations.

Learn more about the trust territory of the Pacific Islands and the countries

of Micronesia on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. I had an internal debate with myself about where to start this episode and what to limit it to.

Micronesia, as a geographic location, is roughly located north of Papua New Guinea and east of the Philippines.

And it's not the same as Polynesia.

The Polynesian migration was, historically speaking, a relatively recent event,

and most Polynesian languages are relatively similar to each other.

The people of Micronesia arrived in their islands much earlier

and they're much closer to Asia and their languages have diverged much more.

Geographically, Micronesia consists of the countries of Kiribati, Nauru, the Marshall Islands,

the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, and the U.S. territories of Guam and the Commonwealth

of the Northern Mariana Islands.

The fact that there is also a country called Micronesia

just makes it all the more confusing.

For the purpose of this episode,

I'm going to be focusing on the modern geopolitical region called Micronesia, which is everything

I just mentioned above except for Kiribasa Naru.

I had previously done an episode on Naru, and both of those countries were formerly British colonies before they achieved

independence. So with that being said, the islands in question were originally

colonized by the Spanish, who then lost Guam to the Americans in the Spanish-American War,

...