Abstract
The preceding chapters have traced the history of New Guinea’s boundaries. In the beginning there was darkness, and even Modjopahit’s brilliance of a later period was a mere glimmer on the horizon. The Dutch East India Company maintained some contacts with a tiny part of the westernmost rim of the giant island. Haphazard as these were, they contributed to laying the foundations for a future claim. British activity off the north-west coast of Australia in the 1820s spurred the Dutch into an expedition. The Proclamation of 1828 claimed the greater part of the island’s western half as a Netherlands possession and Fort Du Bus became the first Dutch attempt at effective occupation—painful and short-lived though it was. The decree of 1848 extended Dutch pretensions, under the cover of its Tidore Protectorate, and they ranged from the 141st meridian of East Longitude in the south to Cape Bonpland, near Humboldt Bay, in the north.
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References
Sir Thomas H. Holdich, Political Frontiers and Boundary Making (London, 1916), pp. 184–5.
Walter Fitzgerald, Africa; A Social, Economic and Political Geography of its Major Regions (8th rev. ed., London and New York, 1957), p. 241n.
Statement by the British Foreign Office in the preface of E. Hertslet’s The Map of Africa by Treaty (vol. I, 3rd ed., London, 1909), p. viii.
For the year 1936, for example, the names of the staff (including typists) of the External Affairs Department are listed on one page. Apart from the Secretary, attached to the Minister for External Affairs, there were four officers in the Political Section, three in the International Co-operation Section, two in the Records Section, and three who were part of the London Office. See Appendix L of the Annual Report, Department of External Affairs, 1936 (Canberra, 1937), p. 111.
An exception must be made for the late Assistant Secretary of Territories, J. E. Willoughby, who not only recognized the need for a boundary survey but laboured hard for its implementation.
George Forbes, David Gill; Man and Astronomer … (London, 1916), esp. pp. 118–19, 122-3.
M. Hotine, ‘The East African Arc of Meridian’, G.J., vol. LXXXIV (1934). Paper read for the Royal Geographical Society, London. Quotation from the discussion, p. 234.
Jeremy Beckett, ‘Papua’s Off-Shore Islands; But who wants them?’, New Guinea, vol. I, No. 4 (1965-6), p. 74.
The failure of The Hague Conference for the Codification of International Law (1930) and the Geneva Conferences on the Law of the Sea (1958 and 1960) to agree on the breadth of the territorial sea is due mainly to several states claiming a breadth considerably in excess of the three-mile limit. At the Geneva Conference of 1960 (attended by the representatives of 87 states) a United States-Canadian compromise proposing a six-mile fishing zone beyond a six-mile territorial sea failed narrowly to gain the required two-thirds majority. See Second United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. Official Records, Doc. A/CONF. 19/8 (1960), passim. The synoptical table attached to the Conference paper (pp. 158-63), lists the breadth and juridical status of the territorial sea and adjacent zones claimed by various states.
Charles G. Fenwick, International Law (3rd rev. ed., New York, 1948), p. 358.
See Great Britain, Admiralty Hydrographic Department, Australia Pilot, vol. III (4th ed., London, 1950), pp. 197–223, 241, and vol. IV (3rd ed., London, 1939), pp. 26-34, 262-6. Since the author’s suggestion keeps Australia’s strategic interests fully in mind it differs from the proposal advanced in Gerald Peel’s Isles of the Torres Straits; An Australian Responsibility (Sydney, 1947). Peel suggests that Queensland hand the Torres Strait islands—including Thursday Island and [sic] Daru—to the federal government and that ‘an autonomous region’ be created within the Commonwealth of Australia with internal sovereignty and the right to secede from the Commonwealth at any time. In a footnote to the last point, Peel adds: ‘For instance in the event some time in the future of an independent New Guinea they [the citizens of the autonomous state] might be faced with a choice of linking up with either New Guinea or Australia’ (pp. 129, 134). This proposal might do justice to the Torres Strait Islanders but would obviously be unacceptable to the Commonwealth—not to mention Queensland. It also ignores the interests of Papua-New Guinea.
Stephen B. Jones, Boundary-Making…, p. 63, citing A. R. Hinks, ‘Notes on the Technique of Boundary Delimitation’, G.J., vol. LVIII (1921), p. 422. Another example, cited by Holdich (op. cit., pp. 187-90). is the original Andes boundary between Argentina and Chile through Patagonia.
C.P.D., H. of R., No. 14 (22 Sept. 1965), p. 1118.
It seems relevant to quote here what the Minister said on 31 March 1965 with regard to answers to questions: ‘I want to say principally that when a Minister answers a question he is not supplying information personally to the member … he is giving information to the whole of the Parliament. Beyond the Parliament, he is giving information as a Statement by a Minister on behalf of the Government. That information is then available to, and is read as a Government statement, by many persons outside the House. … Because the questions did concern our relations with other countries, as indeed so many statements made by a Minister for External Affairs must do, and having regard to the interests of Australia and the Australian people, it was necessary to phrase the answers with exceptional care and discretion, knowing that they would be read by the governments of other countries and that they did concern our relations with other countries …’. C.P.D., H. of R., vol. XLV (31 March 1965), pp. 510-11.
C.P.D., H. of R., No. 15 (28 Sept. 1965), p. 1298.
G. Kaeckenbeeck, International Rivers. A Monograph based on Diplomatic Documents (Pub. Grotius Society No. 1) (London, 1918), passim.
Ibid., pp. 165-6.
This would seem to answer Barry Holloway’s question in the (Papua-New Guinea) House of Assembly to which the Assistant Administrator, Dr J. Gunther, not unexpectedly, replied: ‘I shall answer that question at a later date’. H.A.D., vol. I, No. 4 (23 and 24 Feb. 1965), pp. 500, 527.
Jones, op. cit., p. 157.
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van der Veur, P.W. (1966). Epilogue. In: Search for New Guinea’s Boundaries. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-3620-2_6
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