Article on other languages:
- Neuirland
- Uus-Iirimaa_saar
- Νέα_Ιρλανδία
- Nueva_Irlanda
- Nouvelle-Irlande
- ニューアイルランド島
- Naujoji_Airija
- New_Ireland_(øy)
- Niu_Ailan
- 新爱尔兰岛
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| Native name: Niu Ailan | |
 New Ireland's main towns and nearby islands |
|
| Geography | |
|---|---|
  New Ireland (island) (Papoea-Nieuw-Guinea )
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| Coordinates | |
| Archipelago | Bismarck Archipelago |
| Area | 8,650 square kilometres (3,340 sq mi) |
| Length | 320 kilometres (200 mi) |
| Width | 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) |
| Highest point | Mount Lambel (2,150 metres (7,100 ft)) |
| Country | |
 Papua New Guinea |
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| Province | New Ireland Province |
| Largest city | Kavieng (10,600) |
New Ireland (Tok Pisin: Niu Ailan) is a large island in Papua New Guinea, approximately 8,650 km² in area. It is the main and largest island of the New Ireland Province. It lies northeast of the island of New Britain. Both islands are a part of the Bismarck Archipelago, named for Otto von Bismarck, and they are separated by the Saint George's Channel. The administrative center of the island and of the province is the town of Kavieng located at the northern end of the island.
New Ireland and New Britain islands get their names from the fact that their outlines on a map roughly correspond to those of Great Britain and Ireland in the Atlantic Ocean.
Contents |
Geography
The island is part of the Bismarck Archipelago and is often described as having the shape of a musket. The tropical island of New Ireland is long, narrow and mountainous covered by several mountain ranges and dense rain forests. For much of its 320 kilometers in length, it is less than 10 km across, yet the central mountainous spine is very steep and rugged. The highest peak is Mount Lambel (2,150 meters or 7,054 feet). The island lies between one and five degrees south of the Equator.
New Ireland is surrounded by the Bismarck Sea in the southwest and by the Pacific Ocean in the northeast.
History
The first inhabitants of the Bismarck Archipelago arrived around 33,000 years ago after sailing from what is now Papua New Guinea. Later arrivals included the Lapita people.
In 1616 the Dutch sailors Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten were the first Europeans to set foot on the island.
In the 1870s and 1880s, Marquis de Rays, a French nobleman attempted to establish a French colony on the island called New France. He sent four ill-fated expeditions to the island, the most famous of which caused the death of 123 settlers.
From 1885 to 1914 New Ireland was a part of German New Guinea and bore the name Neumecklenburg. Germans managed several highly profitable copra plantations and built a road to transport the goods. This road is currently in service and is named the Boluminski Highway after the German administrator of German New Guinea, Franz Boluminski. After World War I New Ireland was ceded to Australia. In 1942, during World War II, the island was captured by the Japanese forces and was under their control. The Japanese built a large naval base at Kavieng, but the entire island of New Ireland was bypassed by Allied troops and left to "wither on the vine" until the final Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945 in Tokyo Bay.
Culture
- Malagan - funerary arts that originate in New Ireland and elsewhere in Oceania
- Tatanua - "The person who organizes a tatanua performance must select the music and dancers, assemble a male chorus, and acquire the masks. The masks are usually rented from one of the sculptors who makes them." [1]
References
- ^ d'Alleva, Anne [1998]. in Kara Hattersley-Smith: Arts of the Pacific Islands (in English). New York: Perspectives - Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 75. ISBN 0-8109-2722-5.
External links
- Entry at the Linköping University
