Nauru is an island nation in the Central Pacific Ocean, consisting of an independent coral reef island, the whole island is 6 km long, 4 km wide, the land area is 21.1 square kilometers, and the exclusive economic zone of the sea covers an area of 320,000 square kilometers, making it the smallest island country in the world. Originally, such a small country with a big fart had no sense of existence on the earth, but people had valuable bird droppings on the ground, and they couldn't do it if they wanted to be obscure, so they attracted the hot eyes of everyone.
And these bird droppings are the famous phosphates. Once Nauru, by picking up bird droppings, once became one of the richest countries in the world, but only a few decades later, it has been holding these bird droppings non-stop, and finally "bald" itself, making it poor, and becoming a strange small country that the people laugh at. So here comes the question. What the hell is going on here? Today we will talk about it briefly!
In 1798, British captain John Finn discovered the island of Nauru with a group of sailors aboard the Hunter. Since Nauru was still a matriarchal society and women were in charge, they had a pleasant collision with Captain John and sailors who came from afar. At the time of parting, the reluctant John, out of his unforgettable memories of this experience, named nauru Island Happy Island. It was also from this time that Nauru became a British colony.
By the first half of the 19th century, the British had used his usual urinary nature to exile lawbreakers to Nauru. After coming to this place, these people committed wrongdoing, provoked conflicts and contradictions between various tribes, enslaved the indigenous people of the island, and destroyed the ecological environment of the island. After some tossing and turning, nauru, the happy island, was turned into a disaster island by the British. By 1888, The Father of Sandoko (Nazi Germany) had driven out the British from the island and annexed Nauru to the German Marshall Islands Protectorate.
Since then, Nauru has become a German colony. After the Germans took control of the island, they named it After Nauru and drove out all 12 tribal chiefs on the island (most of them killed by the Germans), and contracted the island to a German merchant to manage. At that time, Nauru was poor, and the merchants could not squeeze oil and water out of it, and could only use it as a temporary stop for ships and a place for supplies. Because of this, the merchants have made serious losses in this business.
Just as he was about to end such a business with the German government, a piece of good news came. In 1890, Albert, an Australian, discovered extremely high-grade phosphate ore in Nauru, which contained a staggering 80% phosphorus content. This discovery immediately attracted a large number of scientists to Nauru to investigate. Without him, because phosphate is a very important mine, which can be used as a fertilizer raw material in agriculture and can also be used to make nutritional supplements for livestock.
Most importantly, phosphate can also extract caffeine from it, which is an important raw material for making drugs such as compound aspirin and cardiotonic agents. However, due to the underdevelopment of mining technology at that time, coupled with the fact that phosphate ore was generally buried very deeply, the low production could not meet the demand at all, which led to its high price. When the scientists arrived in Nauru, they found that the island's phosphate was buried very shallowly, only about 10 meters deep on the surface.
In addition, the phosphate layer is very thick, reaching a thickness of more than 10 meters. And the production is still very large, 3/5 of the island is covered with phosphate. So the question is, how is such a large amount of phosphate formed? In fact, the reason is very simple, countless birds pull out a lot of, in the high temperature and humidity environment quickly dissolved. This dissolution has accumulated over the years and chemically reacted with the soil of the island to eventually form phosphate.
In a word, Nauru's phosphate is actually bird droppings. When news came out that Nauru had a huge amount of phosphate, it immediately became a delicacy in the mouths of the great powers. Because Nauru was so far from the German mainland that it was inconvenient to mine, Germany had to cooperate with the British Empire to form the Pacific Phosphate Mine Company to jointly mine the island's phosphate mines. In the six years before World War I, the two countries could mine an average of 100,000 tons of phosphate per year.
After the outbreak of World War I, the Germans drove the British out of Nauru and monopolized the island's phosphate mines. After World War I, Germany was defeated and the phosphate mines were divided up within the British Empire. Among them, the British mainland and British Australia accounted for 42% respectively, the British New Zealand accounted for 16%, and the indigenous people of the island were compensated at 0.5 pence per ton, which was simply an insult to the Nauruans. After the outbreak of World War II, Nauru was occupied by Japan in 1942, and phosphate naturally became a delicacy among the Japanese population.
In 1945, Australia recaptured Nauru from the Japanese. Until then, Nauruans still had no right to share in the huge profits from their own bird droppings. In 1964, Nauru began a struggle for independence and control of phosphate. The United Nations had offered to relocate Nauruans to settle on the island of Chtis, north of Australia, but was strongly opposed by them. In 1968, Nauru broke away from Australian control and officially became an independent country.
After hundreds of years of slavery, now that he has finally turned himself into a master, the people of Nauru have opened the road to riches in the whole people's bird droppings and digging phosphate, and have also begun the road of "digging freely". Since then, with a sense of revenge, they have collected more than 2 million tons of bird droppings every year, more than during the German colonial period combined. Relying on the huge income from bird droppings, the per capita GDP of Nauruans in 1975 was as high as $37,000, which was four times the per capita GDP of the United States that year.
With money, nature is to enjoy, so people all over Nauru have lived a life of drunken fans ~ families live in free villas, enjoy high-end free education and medical services, and do not need to work. The only thing Nauruans had to do at that time was not to mine phosphate mines, but to stay at home and enjoy the food prepared by the maids, and to drive out for a ride in a free luxury car when they were bored. Nauru has a total of only 10,000 points, but there are more than 3,000 luxury cars.
In order to enjoy a better material life for themselves, nauruans have also built airports on the island of Big Point, got airlines and routes, and maintained the normal operation of 5 Boeing aircraft all year round in the form of huge losses every year. If they are tired of playing in their own country, they charter a flight to travel around the world in a group, and all the expenses during the period are free. In short, the whole people are caught up in the timely pleasure. And it's all built on endless, unbridled bird droppings.
But the bird will be finished one day, and the luxurious life of the Nauruans will come to an end one day. In 1989, Nauru ran its fiscal deficit for the first time. In 1995, the National Bank of Nauru went bankrupt. In 2002, nauru phosphate mining plummeted to 200,000 tonnes. In 2003, the fiscal deficit reached $59 million. In 2004, nauru phosphate mining was only a mere 40,000 tonnes per year. In order to increase its income, Nauru risked the world and turned itself into a tax haven and a money laundering center.
During this period, Nauru also carried out self-help operations, but all of them failed, such as buying a 52-storey building in Australia to use as its last habitat, but the building was eventually mortgaged. Another example is that I have made various investments, but in the end I have lost everything. By 2005, Nauruans, struggling to make ends meet, had to sell their sovereignty to their Australian aunts in exchange for Australian aid. Since then, Nauru, which has become a star by picking up bird droppings, has "balded" itself by picking up bird droppings and has become a strange small country in the population.