Micronesia

The Federated States of Micronesia stretch across the Caroline Islands of the western Pacific in four states, Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosrae, with high volcanic islands and low atolls. Pohnpei is steep, cloud-capped and drenched by rain. Chuuk is a great lagoon ringed by reef, with high islands inside it, and Kosrae rises to Mount Finkol. Off Pohnpei’s east coast, the ruined city of Nan Madol stands on artificial islets built from basalt columns stacked like logs.

Austronesian voyagers settled the islands at least two thousand years ago. On Pohnpei the Saudeleur dynasty ruled from Nan Madol until, in oral tradition, the warrior Isokelekel overthrew it. Spain claimed the Carolines and in 1899 sold them to Germany. Japan seized them in 1914; in February 1944 American aircraft sank dozens of Japanese ships in Chuuk Lagoon. The United States ran the islands as a UN trust territory, and in 1986 a Compact of Free Association left it responsible for their defence.

In Yap, great discs of stone money, rai, once ferried by canoe from Palau, still change hands in exchanges of land and marriage. On Pohnpei, sakau, a drink pounded from pepper root on flat basalt stones, is shared at feasts. Mau Piailug, a master navigator from the atoll of Satawal, guided the canoe Hōkūleʻa from Hawaiʻi to Tahiti in 1976 without instruments. Compact grants and fishing licences fund the government, while Pohnpei pepper, betel nut, copra and wreck diving in Chuuk add income.