The Mariana Islands: 1884–1887 Random Notes

“At various times during the nineteenth century, administrators, missionaries, and government officials had stressed the poor economic conditions of the Marina Islands, pleading for the implementation of administrative and economic reforms. But the cost that reforms for those remote colonies represented to an impoverished government, coupled with the immediacy of domestic and foreign problems, impeded their implementation or reduced them to a minimum.

• Francisco Olive y Garcia, Author

• Marjorie G. Driver, Translator

• Francisco Olive presented, at the end of his term in office as governor of the Marianas, a report concerning the political, economic, demographic, and social conditions of the islands. Like some of his predecessors, his aim is to call the attention of the Spanish Government to the conditions of underdevelopment in these Pacific possessions. Olive reviews the colonial history of the islands from the time of discovery, focusing for the most part on the second half of the nineteenth century, especially the years between 1885 and 1887. Data that refers to communications between the Caroline and Mariana islands is included, as well as statistics on the Carolinian population residing in all the inhabited islands of the Marianas. The report obviously reflects the colonial mentality of Olive, who stresses the responsibility of the Spanish Government to the inhabitants of the Marianas, leaving unchallenged the right of Spain to maintain its sovereignty. The report is to be interpreted against the background of the Spanish situation in the second half of the nineteenth century.
  —Teresa del Valle