ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to the effects of various colonial masters on the development of modern Kosraen cultural practices and norms and on the economy. Kosrae has experienced the rule of four colonial powers: Spain, Germany, Japan, and the United States. The most impressive economic accomplishment of the Japanese on Kosrae was their ambitious program of agricultural development. Kosrae was allocated the subordinate status of a subdistrict, under Ponape. Kosraens reacted to the conditions by returning to subsistence agriculture, earning only a small cash income from the production of copra, which comprised 95% of the total value of exports. The 291 Kosraen employees of the local branch of the Trust Territory government worked in the various departments of a complex administrative bureaucracy. Kosraens had disputed every marker placed by the Japanese survey team in 1932 that would limit their ownership, most claiming that the land belongs to them all the way up the summits of the mountains.
