Was The South Pacific Of Any (Economic) Importance, Pre-WWII?

[TokyoBayer]

@Si_Amigo

Not terribly important economically to the western powers other than as you pointed out strategic importance. This lack of importance to the west was part of the reasoning behind Japan’s aggressive expansionism; they thought that most people would not care if they just took it over.

Nope. This is clearly wrong so I’ll ask for a cite for this.

Japan took over all the islands in the Pacific assuming that the US would fight them island by island, and eventually get tired.

Here is one of a zillion cites for Japan’s Strategy

Japan entered World War II with limited aims and with the intention of fighting a limited war. Its principal objectives were to secure the resources of Southeast Asia and much of China and to establish a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” under Japanese hegemony. In 1895 and in 1905 Japan had gained important objectives without completely defeating China or Russia and in 1941 Japan sought to achieve its hegemony over East Asia in similar fashion. The operational strategy the Japanese adopted to start war, however, doomed their hopes of limiting the conflict. Japan believed it necessary to destroy or neutralize American striking power in the Pacific�the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and the U.S. Far East Air Force in the Philippines�before moving southward and eastward to occupy Malaya, the Netherlands Indies, the Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, the Gilbert Islands, Thailand, and Burma. Once in control of these areas, the Japanese intended to establish a defensive perimeter stretching from the Kurile Islands south through Wake, the Marianas, the Carolines, and the Marshalls and Gilberts to Rabaul on New Britain. From
Rabaul the perimeter would extend westward to northwestern New Guinea and would encompass the Indies, Malaya, Thailand, and Burma. Japan thought that the Allies would wear themselves out in fruitless frontal assaults against the perimeter and would ultimately settle for a negotiated peace that would leave it in possession of most of its conquests.

Which the US countered with its island hopping

After the Battle of Midway, the United States launched a counter-offensive strike known as “island-hopping,” establishing a line of overlapping island bases, as well as air control. The idea was to capture certain key islands, one after another, until Japan came within range of American bombers. Led by General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of the Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific, and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, the first stage of the offensive began with the Navy under Nimitz, and Marine landings on Guadalcanal and nearby islands in the Solomons.

[mlees]

@Sailboat

That’s a bit surprising to me – I thought turbines had massive advantages over reciprocating engines.

The Turbinia wiki link made a showey debut at the Spithead Navy Review in 1897, the steam turbine engine itself being invented in 1884.

The Royal Navy began using turbines in their battleships in 1905, with the very first [HMS] Dreadnought.

The U.S. was slower to adopt the turbine, and built several dreadnoughts with reciprocating engines. The US built four dreadnought types with reciprocating engines (South Carolina, Michigan, Delaware, Oklahoma); and two with Vertical Triple Expansion engines (New York, Texas); and six with Turbo-electric drives. Basically, the USN was looking for fuel economy (indeed, already gauging the needs of a Pacific War).

If I recall correctly, the turbine engine requires expensive reduction gearing another wiki link:

@wiki

In ships, compelling advantages of steam turbines over reciprocating engines are smaller size, lower maintenance, lighter weight, and lower vibration. A steam turbine is only efficient when operating in the thousands of RPM, while the most effective propeller designs are for speeds less than 100 RPM;

, so reciprocating engines were probably cheaper. (The US outfitted it’s Destroyer Escorts with turbo- or diesel-electric drives due to production demands of the “fleet” destroyers, so I might guess that standard steam turbines and their gear boxes required higher machining tolerances and quality control.)

(I am a little too unfamiliar with the history of the French, Italian, German, Japanese, and Russian dreadnoughts to include them here.)

[Si_Amigo]

@TokyoPlayer

Nope. This is clearly wrong so I’ll ask for a cite for this.

The key to my post was that they were not important enough economically that the everyday citizen of the west would care since they were so pre-occupied with Europe. Of course they were important enough to Japan; the oil and the rubber alone made it worth taking. Strategically, the west cared. Had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbor (or other US interest directly) the US would not have been so quick to react.

[lisiate]

Australia and New Zealand supplied lots of resources and men for the wider British Commonwealth. While AFAIK Japan had no serious plans for invading either, it didn’t look like that at the time (so much so that the Australian government insisted that most of the Australian forces in the Middle East be recalled to defend Australia when the Japanese took Papua New Guinea).

[Johanna]

Sandalwood from Pacific islands was an economically important product of the South Pacific in the 18th & 19th centuries.

Trepang from northern Australia was an important food & medicinal product valued in China that was a pre-European colonization (beginning of 18th century or earlier) long-range trade commodity in the South Pacific, via Makassan traders from Indonesia.

"The early explorers knew Fiji to be dangerous, an unknown area inhabited by unpredictable cannibals and strewn with treacherous reefs–in short, a place one avoided. This changed after the discovery of sandalwood and the growth of the bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber) trade. … European settlement in Fiji resulted in the almost immediate involvement of foreign powers. … After the 1860s… Fiji became attractive because of the belief that the British were going to annex it, and economically as a cotton-growing center for European markets which were deprived of this commodity during the American Civil War."cite

Another economic activity was the 19th-century slave trade known as “blackbirding.” The British established sugar plantations in Fiji and Australia and stole workers from Melanesia to work them.