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ThePacific islands are a group ofislands in thePacific Ocean. They are further categorized into three major island groups:Melanesia,Micronesia, andPolynesia. Depending on the context, the termPacific Islands may refer to one of several different concepts: (1) those countries and islands with commonAustronesian origins, (2) the islands once (or currently)colonized, (3) the geographical region ofOceania, or (4) any island located in the Pacific Ocean.
This list of islands in the Pacific Ocean is organized byarchipelago orpolitical boundary. In order to keep this list of moderate size, the more complete lists for countries with large numbers of small or uninhabited islands have been hyperlinked.
The umbrella termPacific Islands has taken on several meanings.[1] Sometimes it is used to refer only to the islands defined as lying withinToa Samoa.[2][3][4] At other times, it is used to refer to the islands of the Pacific Ocean that were previously colonized by the British, French, Han Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, Indonesians, or Japanese, or by the United States. Examples includeBorneo, thePitcairn Islands andTaiwan (also known as Formosa).[5]
A commonly applied biogeographic definition includes islands withoceanic geology that lie within Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and the eastern Pacific (also known as the southeastern Pacific).[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] These are usually considered to be the "Tropical Pacific Islands".[13] In the 1990s, ecologists Dieter Mueller-Dombois and Frederic Raymond Fosberg broke the Tropical Pacific Islands up into the following subdivisions:[14]
The 2007 bookAsia in the Pacific Islands: Replacing the West, by New Zealand Pacific scholarRon Crocombe, considers the phrasePacific Islands to politically encompassAmerican Samoa, Australia, theBonin Islands, the Cook Islands, Easter Island,East Timor,Federated States of Micronesia,Fiji,French Polynesia, the Galápagos Islands,Guam, Hawaii, theKermadec Islands, Kiribati, Lord Howe Island, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Norfolk Island, Niue, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau,Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, theTorres Strait Islands, Wallis and Futuna,Western New Guinea and theUnited States Minor Outlying Islands (Baker Island, Howland Island,Jarvis Island, Midway Atoll,Palmyra Atoll and Wake Island). Crocombe noted that Easter Island, Lord Howe Island, Norfolk Island, the Galápagos Islands, the Kermadec Islands, the Pitcairn Islands and the Torres Strait Islands currently have no geopolitical connections toAsia, but that they could be of future strategic importance in theAsia-Pacific.[15] Another definition given in the book for the termPacific Islands is islands served by thePacific Community, formerly known as the South Pacific Commission. It is a developmental organization whose members include Australia and the aforementioned islands which are not politically part of other countries.[15] In his 1962 bookWar in the Pacific: Strategy and Command, American author Louis Morton places the insular landmasses of the Pacific under the label of the "Pacific World". He considers it to encompass areas that were involved in thePacific Theater ofWorld War II. These areas include the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, as well as Australia, the Aleutian Islands, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, theRyukyu Islands and Taiwan.[16]
Since the beginning of the 19th century, Australia and the islands of the Pacific have been grouped by geographers into a region called Oceania.[17][18] It is often used as a quasi-continent, with the Pacific Ocean being the defining characteristic.[19] In some countries, such as Argentina, Brazil, China, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, France, Greece, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, Spain, Switzerland or Venezuela, Oceania is seen as a proper continent in the sense that it is "one of the parts of the world".[20] In his 1879 bookAustralasia, British naturalistAlfred Russel Wallace commented that, "Oceania is the word often used by continental geographers to describe the great world of islands we are now entering upon" and that "Australia forms its central and most important feature."[21] 19th century definitions encompassed the region as beginning in theMalay Archipelago, and as ending near the Americas.[18][22][23][24][25] In the 19th century, many geographers divided up Oceania into mostly racially-based subdivisions;Australasia,Malaysia (encompassing the Malay Archipelago),Melanesia,Micronesia andPolynesia.[26][27] The 1995 bookThe Pacific Island States, by Australian author Stephen Henningham, claims that Oceania in its broadest sense "incorporates all the insular areas between the Americas and Asia."[28] In its broadest possible usage, it could include Australia, the Melanesian, Micronesian and Polynesian islands, theJapanese and Malay Archipelagos, Taiwan, the Ryukyu andKuril Islands, the Aleutian Islands and isolated islands offLatin America such as the Juan Fernández Islands.[29][30] Islands with geological and historical ties to theAsian mainland (such as those in the Malay Archipelago) are rarely included in present definitions of Oceania, nor are non-tropical islands to the north of Hawaii.[31][32][33] The 2004 bookThe Making of Anthropology: The Semiotics of Self and Other in the Western Tradition, by Jacob Pandian and Susan Parman, states that "some exclude from Oceania the nontropical islands such as Ryukyu, the Aleutian islands and Japan, and the islands such as Formosa, Indonesia and the Philippines that are closely linked with mainland Asia. Others include Indonesia and the Philippines with the heartland of Oceania."[34]
Certain anthropological definitions restrict Oceania even further to only include islands which are culturally within Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.[35][36] Conversely,Encyclopedia Britannica believe that the termPacific Islands is much more synonymous with Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, and that Oceania, in its broadest sense, embraces all the areas of the Pacific which do not fall within Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.[30]The World Factbook and theUnited Nations categorize Oceania/the Pacific area as one of the seven major continental divisions of the world, and the two organizations consider it to politically encompass American Samoa, Australia,Christmas Island,Cocos (Keeling) Islands, the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, French Polynesia, Fiji, Guam, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna and the United States Minor Outlying Islands.[37]
Since the 1950s, many (particularly in English-speaking countries) have viewed Australia as acontinent-sized landmass, although they are still sometimes viewed as a Pacific Island, or as both a continent and a Pacific Island.[38] Australia is a founding member of thePacific Islands Forum, which is now recognized as the main governing body for the Oceania region.[39] It functions as a trade bloc and deals with defense issues, unlike with the Pacific Community, which includes most of the same members. By 2021, the Pacific Islands Forum included all sovereign Pacific Island nations, such as Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji and Tonga, in addition to dependencies of other nations, such as American Samoa, French Polynesia and Guam. Islands which have been fully integrated into other nations, including Easter Island (Chile) and Hawaii (United States), have also shown interest in joining.[40]Tony deBrum, Foreign Minister for the Marshall Islands, stated in 2014, "Not only is Australia our big brother down south, Australia is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum and Australia is a Pacific island, a big island, but a Pacific island."[38] Japan and certain nations of the Malay Archipelago (including East Timor, Indonesia and the Philippines) have representation in the Pacific Islands Forum, but none are full members. The nations of the Malay Archipelago have their own regional governing organization calledASEAN, which includes mainland Southeast Asian nations such asVietnam andThailand.[41][42] In July 2019, at the inaugural Indonesian Exposition held inAuckland, Indonesia launched its 'Pacific Elevation' program, which would encompass a new era of elevated engagement with the region, with the country also using the event to lay claim that Indonesia is culturally and ethnically linked to the Pacific islands. The event was attended by dignitaries from Australia, New Zealand and some Pacific island countries.[43]
Islands of the Pacific Ocean proper, with an area larger than 10,000 km2.
Islands ofFederated States of Micronesia
Palau has over 250 islands, including:
This is the only contemporary text on the Pacific Islands that covers both environment and sociocultural issues and will thus be indispensable for any serious student of the region. Unlike other reviews, it treats the entirety of Oceania (with the exception of Australia) and is well illustrated with numerous photos and maps, including a regional atlas.
One cannot refer to "Pacific islands" and ignore the Galapagos Islands and other eastern Pacific islands.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)There are six great divisions of the earth— Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America and Oceania. Of these, Asia is largest, Europe smallest. Oceania is made up of Australia and many scattered islands.
Oceania is the word often used by continental geographers to describe the great world of islands we are now entering upon [...] This boundless watery domain, which extends northwards of Behring Straits and southward to the Antarctic barrier of ice, is studded with many island groups, which are, however, very irregularly distributed over its surface. The more northerly section, lying between Japan and California and between the Aleutian and Hawaiian Archipelagos is relived by nothing but a few solitary reefs and rocks at enormously distant intervals.
Oceania, the fifth great division of the earth's surface, includes the numerous islands scattered over the great ocean which extends from the south - eastern shores of Asia to the western coast of America.
Oceania is the word often used by continental geographers to describe the great world of islands we are now entering upon [...] This boundless watery domain, which extends northwards of Behring Straits and southward to the Antarctic barrier of ice, is studded with many island groups, which are, however, very irregularly distributed over its surface. The more northerly section, lying between Japan and California and between the Aleutian and Hawaiian Archipelagos is relived by nothing but a few solitary reefs and rocks at enormously distant intervals.
Oceania, the fifth great division of the earth's surface, includes the numerous islands scattered over the great ocean which extends from the south - eastern shores of Asia to the western coast of America. It is separated from Asia by the Str. of Malacca, the Chinese Sea, and the Channel of Formosa; and from America by a broad belt of ocean comparatively free of islands.
the whole region has sometimes been called Oceania, and sometimes Australasia—generally, however, in modern times, to the exclusion of the islands in the Indian archipelago, to which certain writers have given the name of Malaysia [...] we have the three geographical divisions of Malaysia, Australasia and Polynesia, the last mentioned of which embraces all the groups and single islands not included under the other two. Accepting this arrangement, still the limits between Australasia and Polynesia have not been very accurately defined; indeed, scarcely any two geographers appear to be quite agreed upon the subject; neither shall we pretend to decide in the matter. The following list, however, comprises all the principal groups and single island not previously named as coming under the division of Australasia: 1. North of the equator—The Ladrone or Marian islands. the Pelew islands, the Caroline islands, the Radack and Ralick chains, the Sandwich islands, Gilbert's or Kingstnill's archipelago. and the Galapagos. 2. South of the equator—The Ellice group, the Phoenix and Union groups. the Fiji islands, the Friendly islands, the Navigator's islands. Cook's or Harvey islands, the Society islands. the Dangerous archipelago, the Marquesas islands, Pitcairn island, and Easter island.
It is generally accepted that Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the islands north of Japan (the Kurils and Aleutians) are excluded