A Short History of Papua New Guinea is a concise book describing the quick and steady growth of the many small, isolated and self-sufficient societies that made up the fledging British Papua and German New Guinea colonies towards the end of the nineteenth century. In less than one hundred years the people in both colonies were united as one nation, achieving independence in 1975. This book traces how the British and German colonies grew and the effects that each colonial authority had on health, religion, education, and trade up to a decade after independence