Yap Conflict

Also described as the Carolines Question, the Carolines Question, the Iltis Affair, or the Yap Question.

(See also the later, but distinct, Yap Crisis, during the Japanese Period.)

Background

From early in the discoveries period the Western Carolines lay within Spain’s sphere of influence, and so long as no other nation was interested in them, they were tacitly regarded as Spanish possessions. To be sure. Captain Wilson in 1783 and Captain McCluer in 1790 raised the British flag in Palau, but Great Britain did not press these claims. On the other hand, Spain never made any formal assertion of sovereignty; she made but two early and unsuccessful attempts to establish mission stations on the islands and until late in the nineteenth century she made no serious effort to administer them.

With the development of trade in the region in the middle of the nineteenth century Spain, Great Britain, and Germany all experienced a quickening of interest in the matter of sovereignty. In 1867, the British dispatched a man-of-war to avenge the death of the unscrupulous trader, Cheyne, at the hands of the natives of Palau, and the responsible chief was killed. In 1882, after the natives of Palau had plundered a wrecked ship belonging to another dubious trader, O'Keefe, the British dispatched two warships, which, when a demand for an indemnity was refused, sent a landing party ashore and razed the village of Melekeok. In neither case, however, did Great Britain make any territorial claim.

Increasing German Presence

In the meantime, German traders had opened trading stations on Yap and Palau in 1873, when a vessel belonging to one of these traders, Eduard Hemsheim, was about to sail for Palau from Hong Kong, the Spanish consul at the latter port demanded that Herrsheim pay customs duties for his trade with Palau and that he deliver over the Palauans on board as Spanish subjects, The British governor of Hong Kong refused to support the consul's demands, and Hernsheim disregarded them, Spain took the occasion, however, to assert her sovereignty over the Carolines, Germany, in 1875, protested to Madrid that there was no treaty entitling Spain to make any such claim, and that no representatives of the Spanish Government had ever been established on the islands. Great Britain supported the German position. In 1876, Germany dispatched a corvette to Yap, Ngulu, and Palau to map the area and to protect the interests of German merchants and, at the request of the British Admiralty, of English traders as well. An exchange of diplomatic notes between Spain, Germany, and Great Britain resulted the following year in an agreement whereby Spain recognized complete freedom of trade in all Pacific areas not actually occupied by a European nation.

Flag Raising Incident on Yap

Spain now began slowly to mature plans for the occupation of the Carolines, A Spanish cruiser visited Yap and Palau in 1883, and on February 2A, 1885, the Madrid government ordered the governor of the Philippines to take possession of the islands. On August 21 and 22 respectively, two Spanish vessels arrived at Yap with a new governor, soldiers, convict laborers, two priests, riding horses, cattle, water buffaloes, and stone to build a church and a governor’s residence.

Instead of raising the Spanish flag immediately, however, the party spent five days in selecting a suitable site, in landing their animals, and in planning an appropriate ceremony. Suddenly, early in the morning of August 25, the German gunboat litis sped into port, landed a party, planted the German flag, and took possession of the islands in the name of the Kaiser. Taken completely by surprise, the Spaniards resorted to the ineffective subterfuge of raising their flag during the night and claiming priority of action. Later, however, they lowered their flag, and the matter was submitted to Pope Leo XIII for adjudication.

Papal Adjudication

In December, 1885, the Pope confirmed Spain's claim to sovereignty on condition that she maintain an orderly government, grant full protection to all western traders, allow Germany in particular to trade freely, to establish fisheries and plantations, to send warships to any port, and to establish coaling stations. Early In 1886 Great Britain reached an agreement with Spain and Germany whereby she too gained the above-mentioned rights. Germany meanwhile dispatched a warship to make surveys of Palau, and her traders proceeded with their plans for commercial expansion.

Her claim to the Carolines confirmed, Spain, in 1886, dispatched nine priests and monks of the Capuchin order to found missions on Yap and Palau and established on Yap a government office for the administration of the western Carolines.

Here, as on Pohnpei in the Eastern Carolines, fortifications were built and a military garrison maintained. Missionary endeavor, though modest, was the principal activity of the Spaniards throughout the period of their rule. They interfered very little in local affairs, and from what little effort they expended they reaped no economic rewards, for the trade of the area was monopolized by Germans, Americans, and Japanese. On several occasions Spain dispatched warships and troops to punish the natives of outlying islands for offenses against traders or missionaries, but her hold over the region remained tenuous and her influence small.

Ultimately, the islands were to be ruled by the Germans within a decade's time. Spain, having lost the Philippines as well as Guam to the Americans in 1898, sold its remaining Pacific possessions -including Yap- to Germany for 24,000,000 pesetas.

References and Resources

Farmer, Ensign Tristram E. “Too Little, Too Late: The Fight for the Carolines, 1898.” Naval History Magazine, 1989, https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/1989/january/too-little-too-late-fight-carolines-1898.

Mackenzie, S. S. “German Colonization in the Pacific: The Outbreak of War.” The Australians at Rabaul: The Capture and Administration of the German Possessions in the Southern Pacific, vol. 10, Angus and Robertson LTD., 1941, pp. 1–6, https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/awm-media/collection/RCDIG1069938/document/5520688.PDF.

Saxon, Timothy D. “Anglo-Japanese Naval Cooperation, 1914-1918.” Naval War College Review, vol. 53, no. 1, 2000, pp. 62–92, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44643068.

Schencking, J. Charles. “Bureaucratic Politics, Military Budgets and Japan’s Southern Advance: The Imperial Navy’s Seizure of German Micronesia in the First World War.” War in History, vol. 5, no. 3, July 1998, pp. 308–26, https://doi.org/10.1191/096834498674115672.

van der Meer, Arnout H. C. “Review: Pacific Strife. The Great Powers and Their Political and Economic Rivalries in Asia and the Western Pacific 1870–1914, Written by Kees van Dijk.” Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, vol. 172, no. 4, Jan. 2016, pp. 556–58, https://doi.org/10.1163/22134379-17204011.