PalauBelau

People reached Palau at least 3,000 years ago, probably from Island Southeast Asia. On Babeldaob they carved hillsides into huge terraces, still visible as stepped grassland, and later built villages of stone platforms and paths. For centuries people also lived on the Rock Islands themselves, until those villages were abandoned in the 1600s, perhaps because of population pressure or climate change.

Palauan society is organised by matrilineal clans. Land, titles and wealth pass through women, and senior women of a clan choose and can remove the male title-holder. Villages were federated under paramount chiefs; two alliances, led by the Ibedul of Koror and the Reklai of Melekeok, competed for power into the colonial era. Both titles still exist and their holders sit on the Council of Chiefs.

The bai, the men's meeting house, was the political centre of each village. Its steep roof and gable are painted with stories and symbols, and inside, clan chiefs took set places along the walls. Very few old bai survive; the one at Airai is the oldest, and a replica stands at the Belau National Museum in Koror.

Palauan money, udoud, is made of glass and ceramic beads and bars of unknown origin, some possibly from Southeast Asia centuries ago. Pieces are ranked, named and passed through women at births, marriages and funerals. Udoud is still exchanged at ceremonies such as the ocheraol (a house-building fund-raiser) and the omengat (first-birth ceremony), and its value is social rather than market.

Spanish navigators sighted Palau in the 16th century but the islands stayed outside European control for two more centuries. In 1783 the British East India Company ship Antelope wrecked on the reef. Ibedul helped Captain Henry Wilson's crew build a new ship, and sent his son, Lee Boo, back with them to London, where the young prince charmed society before dying of smallpox in 1784.

Traders came for sea cucumber (bêche-de-mer), turtle shell and copra through the 19th century, bringing guns that shifted the balance between rival chiefdoms. Disease reduced the population. In 1885 a papal arbitration awarded the Caroline Islands, including Palau, to Spain, and Capuchin missionaries began converting islanders to Catholicism.

Spain sold Palau to Germany in 1899 after losing the Spanish–American War. The Germans mined phosphate on Angaur with imported labour, planted coconuts and tried to stamp out some customs. Their rule lasted only fifteen years, but the phosphate works and the German-era names on Angaur remain.

Japan took Palau in 1914 and ran it under a League of Nations mandate from 1920. In 1922 Koror became the capital of the Nan'yō-chō, the South Seas Government for all of Japan's Micronesian territories. Roads, a hospital, schools, shrines, shops and power lines followed, and by the late 1930s Koror had tens of thousands of residents, most of them Japanese and Okinawan settlers who outnumbered Palauans.

Palauans went to Japanese-language schools for a few years, worked on plantations, mines and in town, and many married into Japanese families. Hundreds of Japanese words entered Palauan, from daijob (fine) to words for everyday objects. The period left a deep and complicated attachment to Japan: many older Palauans remember order and prosperity as well as a clear racial hierarchy.

The Japanese era also brought the scientists of the Palau Tropical Biological Station, which studied the reefs in the 1930s, and the artist Hijikata Hisakatsu, who encouraged carvers to turn bai gable stories into portable wooden panels. These became the storyboards now sold as Palau's signature craft.

US commanders expected Peleliu to fall in a few days when the 1st Marine Division landed on 15 September 1944. Instead, Japanese forces had dug into the coral ridges of the Umurbrogol, later called Bloody Nose Ridge, with hundreds of linked caves. Fighting in intense heat lasted more than two months, until late November, and the Army's 81st Division finished the battle.

Around 10,000 Japanese defenders died, nearly the whole garrison, along with some 1,800 Americans killed and many more wounded. The airfield the Americans wanted was of limited use in the end, and the battle is still debated as one of the most costly and least necessary of the Pacific war. Palauan residents had been evacuated to Babeldaob beforehand, which saved many lives.

A group of 34 Japanese soldiers held out in the caves until April 1947. Angaur, just south, was taken in September 1944 by the 81st Division. Today Peleliu has fewer than 500 residents; tanks, landing craft, guns and aircraft lie where they were left, and Japanese and American memorials stand among the ridges.

After the war Palau was part of the US-run Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. In 1979 Palauans chose not to join the Federated States of Micronesia, and in 1981 they adopted a constitution that banned nuclear weapons and materials from their territory without a three-quarters vote. That clause clashed with the US security terms of the proposed Compact of Free Association.

Between 1983 and 1993 Palau voted on the Compact eight times. The period was violent: the first president, Haruo Remeliik, was assassinated in 1985, and his successor, Lazarus Salii, died of a gunshot in 1988. The nuclear clause was eventually suspended for the Compact by a simple majority after a constitutional change, and the Compact passed in 1993.

Palau became independent on 1 October 1994 and joined the United Nations the same year. Under the Compact, the US is responsible for defence, Palauans can live and work in the US, and US funding supports the budget. A renewed agreement signed in 2023 and funded by Congress in 2024 extends economic support for 20 years.

Palau is one of the few states that recognise Taiwan rather than China. China discouraged group tours after 2017, which cut visitor numbers, while ties with Taiwan, Japan and the US have deepened. US military projects, including a radar system on Babeldaob and Angaur, are expanding (check progress).

Palauan custom always managed the sea. Chiefs could declare a bul, a ban on fishing a reef or taking a species for a season, and clans held rights over particular fishing grounds. Modern conservation law in Palau draws openly on that tradition, and many protected areas are managed by the states that own them.

In 2009 Palau became the world's first shark sanctuary. In 2012 the Rock Islands Southern Lagoon was listed by UNESCO as a mixed natural and cultural site. In 2015 a law created the Palau National Marine Sanctuary, closing about 80 per cent of the country's waters to commercial fishing from 2020, with the rest reserved for local fishers; how much of that closure stays in force has been debated since (check).

Visitors meet the system through fees and rules. The Palau Pledge, introduced in 2017, is stamped into passports and signed at immigration. The US$100 Pristine Paradise Environmental Fee in every air ticket funds conservation and local projects. Since 2020 reef-toxic sunscreens have been banned, and Rock Islands and Jellyfish Lake permits pay for rangers.

Jellyfish Lake shows how fragile the system is. Its golden jellyfish, descended from ocean jellyfish trapped when sea level fell and rose, number in the millions in good years but collapsed during the 2016 drought. The lake has closed and reopened several times as numbers changed. Swimming there, without scuba or sunscreen, is the experience many visitors come for, and the rules exist to keep it possible.