The first Europeans to sight New Guinea were two 16th century Portuguese sea captains who were so unimpressed that they did not even bother to claim it for their King. Second largest island in the world (after Greenland), it was a tangle of tropical jungle inhabited by mosquitoes, crocodiles, and man-eating savages. In 1828 The Netherlands claimed western New Guinea, ruled it benevolently but with distant interest; in the words of one observer, it "became a sort of Dutch hobby." Last week, as the Dutch finally abandoned their costly hobby, the place seemed to have changed remarkably little.
On the...
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