ABSTRACT
The Solomon Islands are one of the major island groups of the south Pacific with a population of 225 000 and a land area of 28 530 square km. They were a British protectorate for 85 years from 1893 to 1978, when they gained their political independence. Outwardly, the history of the islands accords closely with the neoMarxist dependency theory which maintains, inter alia, that colonial territories were exploited for their human and natural resources in order to advance the welfare of the metropolitan power. The establishment of a large-scale plantation economy by international firms and the recruitment of Solomon Islanders for labour service at home and abroad seems to fit this classic model. Furthermore, the dependency theory argues that the current state of underdevelopment of Third World nations is directly attributable to the continued economic imbalance in the relationship between the imperial centre and the territorial periphery.
