European exploration and settlement of Oceania began in the 16th century, starting with the Spanish (Castilian) landings and shipwrecks in the Mariana Islands, east of the Philippines. This was followed by the Portuguese landing and settling temporarily (due to the monsoons) in some of the Caroline Islands and Papua New Guinea. Several Spanish landings in the Caroline Islands and New Guinea came after. Subsequent rivalry between European colonial powers, trade opportunities and Christian missions drove further European exploration and eventual settlement. After the 17th century Dutch landings in New Zealand and Australia, with no settlement in these lands, the British became the dominant colonial power in the region, establishing settler colonies in what would become Australia and New Zealand, both of which now have majority European-descended populations. British exploration of Oceania increased in the late 18th century, particularly through the voyages of James Cook between 1768 and 1779, which resulted in detailed mapping of the Pacific region. States including New Caledonia (Caldoche),New Caledonia: People: Ethnic Groups., World Factbook of CIA Hawaii,Census shows Hawaii is becoming whiter , starbulletin.com French Polynesia,French Polynesia: People: Ethnic Groups. World Factbook of CIA and Norfolk Island also have considerable European populations. Europeans remain a primary ethnic group in much of Oceania, both numerically and economically.
The areas covered in this article follow the guidelines set out by list of sovereign states and dependent territories in Oceania.
European settlement and colonization
Australasia
Australia and New Zealand
European settlement in Australia began in 1788 when the British established the Crown Colony of New South Wales with the first settlement at Port Jackson. New Zealand was part of New South Wales until 1840 when it became a separate colony and experienced a marked increase in European settlement.
While the largest European ethnic group to originally settle in both Australia and New Zealand were the English, the settler population in Australia from early times contained a large Irish Catholic component, in contrast to New Zealand which was more Scottish in composition.
For generations, the vast majority of both colonial-era settlers and post-independence immigrants to Australia and New Zealand came primarily from the British Isles. However, waves of European immigrants were later drawn from a broader range of countries. Australia, in particular, received large numbers of European immigrants from countries such as Italy, Greece, Germany, Malta, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia following the Second World War. Today, Australia has the largest Maltese population outside of Malta itself. Up until the 1940s, fellow Anglosphere colony the United States had received more migrants from areas such as Southern Europe when compared to Australia. A number of factors contributed to Australia's lower numbers, including the longer distance, the lack of industries in Australia at the time and because the Australian government were only able to cover travel costs for British migrants.Price, Charles. "Southern Europeans in Australia: Problems of Assimilation." The International Migration Review 2, no. 3 (1968): 3–26. https://doi.org/10.2307/3002619.
Between the end of World War II and 1955 alone, 850,000 Europeans came to Australia, including 171,000 "Displaced persons", war-time and post-war emigrants resettled in the country by arrangement with the International Refugee Organization. These immigrants were scattered in both urban and rural areas throughout Australia. Assimilation policies of the 1940s and 1950s required new continental European arrivals to learn English, adopt to pre-existing European Australian cultural practices and become indistinguishable from the Australian-born population as quickly as possible. This was also the case in New Zealand, with their government believing that continental Europeans could easily assimilate to the pre-existing culture. The Australian-born population were often encouraged to forge friendships with the new arrivals. For example, in 1950 the New South Wales State Minister for Immigration publicly requested residents of Goulburn to invite new Australians into their homes on Australia Day. The suggestion was supported by Christian churches in the city. A government program known as the Good Neighbour Council operated in Australian communities, with the specific aim of encouraging locals to establish friendships with post-World War II immigrants. The New Settlers League, formed after World War I, was a collaboration between the government and civil society, and served many of the same purposes as the Good Neighbour Council around this time. It assisted new Australian immigrants not only in assimilating, but also in finding employment.
By the time restrictions on non-white immigration began being lifted in the late 1960s, the governments had already moved towards a policy of integration, where new immigrants were allowed to retain their original cultural identities. This echoed developments in other immigrant-receiving countries outside of Oceania, notably Canada. James Forrest and Michael Poulsen from Macquarie University wrote in 2003, "the melting pot approach did not properly grasp the full nature of the processes involved. In the United States this led to a realization that, as many ethnic minority groups were assimilated, losing original sources of differentiation like language and culture, they were in fact reconstituted as something else while remaining as [an] identifiable group. In Australia and Canada, the new perspective resolved around multiculturalism, focusing on the positive aspects of ethnic diversity and the identity of migrant groups."
In March 2022, the Australian government granted temporary visas to approximately 5,000 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion of their country.
The current top 25 European ethnic groups in Australia as of 2016 are as follows:
European ethnicityPopulation in Australia (2016)English AustraliansGenerally used to describe later English arrivals in Australia. 7,852,221 AustraliansGenerally used to describe descendants of early British settlers. 7,298,238Irish Australians 2,388,058Scottish Australians 2,023,460Italian Australians 1,000,013German Australians 982,230Greek Australians 397,435Dutch Australians 339,547 Polish Australians 183,968Maltese Australians 175,563Welsh Australians 144,589French Australians 135,384Croatian Australians 133,264Spanish Australians 119,957Serbian Australians 104,549Macedonian Australians 98,437Russian Australians 85,646Hungarian Australians 73,613Portuguese Australians 61,890Danish Australians 59,292Ukrainian Australians 46,192Austrian Australians 44,408Swedish Australians 40,216Swiss Australians 31,560Cypriot Australians 29,005
This list excludes outside ethnicities often associated with Europeans (such as American Australians and Canadian Australians) as well as transcontinental ethnicities which are generally considered to be Asian (such as Armenian Australians and Turkish Australians).
Christmas Island The first European sighting of the island is believed to have been in 1616 by Richard Rowe, master of the Thomas ship. It was later sighted on Christmas Day 1643 by Captain William Mynors of the British East India Company, who named it Christmas Island.
The earliest known landing occurred in 1688, when the English ship Cygnet arrived near the Dales wetland on the island's west coast. No human inhabitation was found. Explorer William Dampier was on board, and recorded how some of the crew brought large coconut crabs back to the ship to eat. Crew of the vessel Amethyst made an unsuccessful attempt to explore the island in 1857, being hampered by inland cliffs and dense jungle.
In 1887, a party from British naval vessel HMS Egeria made their way through the dense jungle to reach the summit of what is now Murray Hill. In the process they became the first to discover the island's phosphate reserves. Specimens of soil and rock were collected by the men of HMS Egeria; the Scottish naturalist John Murray analyzed the specimens and confirmed that they were phosphate of lime. On 6 June 1888, Britain annexed Christmas Island at the urging of John Murray.
That same year Scott George Clunies-Ross, owner of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, sent his brother Andrew and a small party of Cocos Malay workers to form a settlement at Flying Fish Cove (the present-day capital of Christmas Island). This was in order to pre-empt any other claim to the island's resources. Britain offered both Murray and Clunies-Ross a joint phosphate lease until the year 1990. The parties agreed, with the lease allowing them to mine phosphate and cut timber on the island. In 1897, the Christmas Island Phosphate Company was formed, being largely owned by the former lessees. A year later, 200 Chinese laborers, eight European managers and five Sikh policemen arrive on the island to make up a workforce, supplemented by a small number of Malays.
The first major shipment of phosphate occurred in 1900. Between 1900 and 1904, 550 people on the island died from thiamine deficiency. Charles William Andrews of the British Museum conducted a comprehensive study of the island's natural history in 1908, following on from an earlier study he had conducted. Phosphate mining was reduced during World War I.
The island's rich phosphate reserves and strategic location made it a target for the Japanese during World War II. On 21 January 1942, a Norwegian ship being loaded with phosphate for Australia was hit by torpedoes fired from a Japanese submarine, which led to it sinking near the northern coast. Women and children from 50 Asian and European families were evacuated to the Western Australian city of Perth soon afterwards. Prior to World War II, the Dutch and British had an agreement to develop a seaplane base on Christmas Island, but it was never used at the start of the War due to inadequate Dutch resources.
On 31 March 1942, approximately 850 Japanese troops arrived by sea and took over the island. Many of the Asian workers had fled into the jungle when the Japanese arrived, living off crabs and birds. The Japanese restarted phosphate operations for the Empire of Japan, imprisoning remaining Europeans and hunting down the 1,000 Chinese and Malays hiding in the jungle. Most of the Chinese and Malay were captured by the Japanese and put into forced labor. Bombing by Allied forces and acts of sabotage by the islanders meant that very little phosphate was actually exported to Japan. Nearly two-thirds of the island's population (including the Europeans) were sent to prison camps in Indonesia when food supplies began running out during late 1943.
The remaining Japanese troops were also sent to Indonesia when Japan surrendered the island in August 1945. It was reoccupied by the British in October the same year. Australia and New Zealand purchased the Christmas Island Phosphate company in 1949, and the British Phosphate Commission managed mining operations for both governments. Administrative responsibility also shifted from the United Kingdom to the British colony of Singapore. The post-war inhabitants continued to be a mix of Asian and European ethnicities, with their children being segregated from each other in education. Ethnically segregated schools were later abolished, despite fears from the Europeans that this would lead to a decline in teaching quality. Sovereignty of Christmas Island was transferred from Singapore and the United Kingdom to Australia in 1958. The Australian government paid Singapore £2,800,000 as compensation for lost future phosphate revenue. It became one of Australia's most geographically distant territories, being 2,600 kilometers removed from the mainland's west coast.