Nauruan Civil War
The Nauruan Civil War was fought from 1878 to 1888, between forces loyal to incumbent King Aweida of Nauru and those seeking to depose him in favour of a rival claimant. The war was preceded by the introduction of firearms to the island and its inhabitants, Nauruans, as a whole. For the majority of the war, the loyalists and the rebels found themselves in a stalemate, with one side controlling the northern and the other the southern part of the island.
In 1888, the German Empire intervened by restoring Aweida to the throne and confiscating combatants' firearms; by the time they finished, the German soldiers had confiscated 791 rifles from both belligerents, nearly one gun for every remaining living adult inhabitant of the island. By historical estimates, Nauru had a population of approximately 1,400 in 1848; by the end of war, there were about 900 inhabitants.
Having effectively been put under German control with the civil war's ceasefire, Nauru was shortly thereafter annexed into the German colonial empire. It became a distinct polity within German New Guinea in 1906 and it was subsequently captured by the Australian expeditionary force in 1914, at the outbreak of World War I.
Background
When the British captain John Fearn came to Nauru in 1798, the island had been avoided by sailors, due to its notoriety as a station for pirates. Nevertheless, in the 19th century, the immigration of Europeans, often lawbreakers, steadily increased. Traditional life had been disrupted by the introduction of firearms and spirits, a form of alcoholic drink unknown to Nauruans, although the Nauruans had consumed palm wine for several thousand years.Timeline
Outbreak
The conflict began during a marriage festival following a verbal altercation regarding tradition. While discussing a point of etiquette, one of the attendees fired a pistol and fatally shot the son of a clan chief. In the context of Nauruan culture, the obligation to avenge the man's death was considered unequivocal. Former feuds had their origins in similar incidents; however, this incident was the first recorded example following the introduction of firearms that had become commonplace. The conflict saw the island divided into a north and a south.War reports
A squadron of the British Royal Navy anchored off the coast of Nauru on September 21, 1881, and the squadron's flagship approached the island, to appraise the local situation. An acculturated local beachcomber, William Harris, boarded the British ship, which summoned the rest of the squadron by semaphore that evening, saying that a tribal war was raging, that all of the islanders were drunk, that the actual king of the island, Aweida, wished to have missionaries come to the island to help stop the war.Six years later, an Auckland-dwelling British sea captain named Frederick Moss came in his schooner, the Buster, landing on Nauru while his ship was being reloaded with copra. He reported that the inhabitants of Nauru were friendly and of good humor, although most of the boys and all of the men were armed with rifles and carbines. The war was still going on, although by this time it appeared that many of the islanders had had enough. Through his conversations with the natives, Moss noted that none of them wished to continue fighting, but no tribal group trusted the others to lay down their arms if it did so first. They wished for universal disarmament of the island. Moss received another report from Harris, who still lived on the island. Harris said that two of his family members had already been shot and that he wished a Christian mission would come to the island to restore peace once again.