Population Decline in Island Melanesia: Aphrodisian Cultural Practices, Sexually Transmitted Infections, and Low Fertility

The Melanesian islands of the Southwest Pacific (Island Melanesia) experienced the effects of European contact somewhat later than islands in Micronesia and Polynesia. There were sporadic contacts in the early nineteenth century, but most places had little sustained impact until whaling ships, traders, missionaries, and labor recruiters arrived in larger numbers after 1850. In consequence the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago (Papua New Guinea), Solomons, and New Hebrides (Vanuatu) experienced growing instability in local politics, increasingly violent interisland relations, epidemics, and a decline in population that became increasingly apparent to outside observers in the last three decades of the nineteenth