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I was appalled to discover the extent of ignorance here on the 'pedia about this region just now.

Daeron messaged me today to ask for my help or advice on something to do with West Papua. I'm not sure what, as I half-read his note while opening up the link he provided and discovered — to my absolute astonishment — that the entry on the western half of New Guinea — i.e., the area formerly colonised by the Dutch and now controlled by Indonesia — was titled Papua.

Now as every schoolboy knows, Papua is the area south of the Owen Staney Ranges. The Territory of Papua and the Territory of New Guinea (the area north of the ranges) were joined together in 1949 to make up Papua New Guinea. Papua is the southern half, New Guinea is the northern half.

It seems that the Javanese government has now decided to rename a completely different area (the former West Irian) to Papua. One does not have to be Albert Einstein to work out the motivation: they already have the western half of the island, why not give it a new name that quietly implies that the eastern half belongs to them as well?

Well, it is our task as Wikipedians to simply report, not to comment, so normally we follow every official name change faithfully. In this case, however, that option is simply not available. The name Papua already applies to somewhere else, and has done since before any of us were alive.

OK, someone came along and renamed the "West Papua" or "West Irian" entry to "Papua" - doubtless in all good faith. That's OK. Mistakes happen. But nobody noticed! (No, not me either.) But the really appalling thing is what I observed as I was sorting out the mess of misdirected links after I renamed the West Papua article and created this one. There were all sorts of stupid and nonsensical links, that clearly demonstrated that most people hadn't the faintest idea of the geography. Tannin 09:44, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Heh, "as every schoolboy knows" should maybe be modified to "as every Australian schoolboy knows". I doubt many outside Australia or Indonesia know much about New Guinea geography or politics - we have to rely on you to tell us what's what! Stan 13:55, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Yeah .... and we let you down. I'm ashamed of us. Tannin
It's actually less simple, and perhaps a bit less sinister that you suppose. "Papua" is in fact the Malay name for the whole island of New Guinea, and has been for centuries. It is, I have been told, also the Dutch name for a gollywog - the original derivation turns on "wooly hair". The area annexed by Queensland - originally without support from London - was initially called "British New Guinea" - why the name was changed to "Papua", adopting the Malay name for "New Guinea" I frankly don't know. The Indonesian name for New Guinea also originally followed the Malay (Indonesian is essentially a pidginised version of Malay so this is hardly surprising), but on seizing it from the Dutch they renamed it IRIAN. This is an acronym - the last three letters are from Republik Indonesia Anti-Nederland (can't remember off-hand what the "I" stood for). They changed it back to Papua largely as a concession to the "free Papua movement", who naturally never accepted the IRIAN name. The peoples and indigenous languages of New Guinea are described as "Papuan" of course. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 17:09, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

British or Australian Jurisdiction?

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There is some interesting information in the main article which may or may not be correct. I had once actually put forward a similar argument in relation to the Ross Dependency, in that the British government only ever gave the Ross Dependency to New Zealand in the capacity of having it governed by the Governor-General. That makes an interesting legal argument in that the British government could as yet revoke the relevant order of 1923 and reclaim New Zealand Antarctic territory, notwithstanding the 1961 Antarctic Treaty.

I suppose the same situation arose with British New Guinea, but I'd need to see the exact wording of the order. Having said all this, I would have thought however that if British New Guinea had still been officially regarded as UK territory right up until 1975, then it would have required a UK act of parliament as well as an Australian act of parliament to have brought about the independence of Papua New Guinea in that same year. To the best of my knowledge, the independence of Papua New Guinea was handled entirely by the Australian parliament. I'd like to see if we could get some expert opinions here to tidy this issue up. David Tombe (talk) 09:08, 28 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

World War II

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The section on World War II needs to be reviewed. Since the article is on the Territory of Papua an overview of the Bombing of Port Moresby, the Kokoda Trail, Milne Bay and the beachhead campaigns is all that is needed with links to more detailed articles on these battles rather than a summary of the war in the Australian Mandated Territory of New Guinea. Anthony Staunton (talk) 00:40, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Territory

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If you take New Guinea, and subtract Kaiser-Wilhelmland and Dutch New Guinea, you get an area of 70,871 mi2 / 183,563 km2.

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Edit War

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We are well past the three revert rule so I think this should be settled in talk. I do not understand why the change made by User:Kanto7 should not stand. It objectively makes the article better by including the Monarchs and Lieutenant-Governors in the infobox. User:PyroFloe could you please explain your reasoning for reverting? // Lollipoplollipoplollipop :: talk 12:49, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Okay I'll admit their edits on this article should stand. The list of British monarchs should still be included though which they removed. I reverted them because based from his recent contributions, he has engaged in multiple edit wars before so I assume since other editors are reverting him that he has added unsourced information again, in addition to that an IP was the one that added it not the account Kanto7 which was reverting it and he claims that is his [[1]] so I think that's in violation of multiple account misuse. But in this case, I'll let it slide. Best regards, PyroFloe (talk) 15:42, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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