This is the first episode in a two part series to teach you how to become a King of Micronesia as an American citizen.
Sort of. Not really. Obviously there’s a catch.
It’s probably not going to happen to you. But it isn’t impossible. Happened to a friend of mine.
His name is Willy. And he’s currently the Rohsa of Kitti on the paradise island of Pohnpei.
So why don’t I teach you what he did?
To understand how my friend William Hawley became the Rohsa of Kitti, I need to go back to a time of old Pohnpei.
To a feudal island ruled by living demigod kings, the nahnmwarki.
Their lords, called the nahnken, were extensions of their righteous power. And everything belonged to them.
All land was theirs. All things were theirs. The moment that an item entered Pohnpei’s reef, it belonged to the nahnmwarki. Even people.
But outside of war and forced labour, this was mainly displayed through a tax known as the first fruits.
The best of every harvest would be saved for their rulers. And in turn, they were expected to provide for their people with great feasts.
The higher their status, the more they were expected to provide.
For much of Pohnpeian history, during a good season, people here could expect some form of feast every two to three days on average.
Some would even last for weeks.
And the second job of the nahnmwarki was to control this land. To protect it and decide where people lived.
To know which families could get along as neighbours and which couldn’t. To have enough power to keep the peace.
But at their core they didn’t really own anything. It was just theirs I suppose to share.
But in the 1800's this system would face two challenges that would all but destroy it.
The dual scourge of Spanish missionization, and American whalers.
A time that would become known as the Micronesian apocalypse.
Dozens of island societies died almost entirely from disease. Smallpox, influenza, and perhaps worst of all, syphilis.
In ancient Pohnpei, a woman was traditionally wed around 14, therefore prostitution among visiting whaling ships,
ships full of disease, would take place among those too young to yet be married.
Their fathers and brothers would row them out in ships and leave them for days in exchange for tobacco and guns.
Guns that led to an arms race that led to more trafficking that led to more syphilis.
By the time those girls would reach the age to be wed, the disease would have left them infertile.
What culture remained would be systemically destroyed by the Spanish.
With incoming missionaries from both America and Europe, it wouldn’t be long before the Catholics and Protestants had overtaken these islands,
and brought their international conflict alongside them.
By the 1890's, when the Germans took ownership from that collapsing Spanish empire, the population of this island had dropped from over 40 thousand to under 3.
In the neighbouring state of Kosrae, it left barely few hundred clinging to life. Every single one of them a convert to this new God.
But within that apocalypse, some thrived,
particularly those with access to a Western God’s healthcare, education, and sexual restrictions.
The most famous of which would be baptized Henry and give himself the name Nanpei, meaning something like lord.
His father was a nahnken but their system is matrilineal, so with a mother from a lesser clan,
the half-British daughter of a visiting sailor, despite his father's status he had no real future within his tribal aristocracy.
So in exchange for his daughter’s hand that British sailor demanded that his grandson be given a gift at birth
that no Pohnpeian had ever been given before. Land.
Not in the ancient tribal sense. Not in the way his father had held it, but through the new Spanish concept of private ownership.
It would be legally his, and his alone. Which was not the Pohnpeian way.
Historically speaking, in Pohnpeian cultural life, when a nahnken died it was the right of the nahnmwarki to redivide that land.
He chose the new nahnken and he willed him the land.
He just didn’t have the documents to prove that, and Henry Nanpei did.
In this way, Henry became the first man to represent a new, seemingly-inevitable system.
A Protestant, American religious upbringing meeting the tribal feudalism of old Pohnpeian society. A bridge between worlds.
And there’s no question that he felt the weight of that position.
Even from his teens, his goal was nothing less than taking over this entire island.
To secularize a nation, and create an independent state capable of saving what little culture still remained in Pohnpei.
The first stage of Henry’s conquest was to set up a store on the small bit of land he’d inherited from his father.
He’d rent his harbour to ships hiding from the Spanish and be paid in western goods. They paid more if they were illegal.
And what did he care about the Spanish? He’d already been in their jails.
The nearby nahnken would rack up massive debts buying his imports, and then when time came to pay, he’d demand their land.
Some, he’d convince with violence. Others would apparently even be seduced by his wife, the daughter of a Filipino Catholic named Narcissus.
But no matter how he came at them, the end result was always the same. Henry got the land.
The second stage of his conquest came from coconut trees.
With enough private ownership, he could do something that nobody else could.
He could please the Germans. He could provide that postcard fantasy that they’d been demanding of their new Pacific plantations.
Coconut trees in long straight lines, planted as a monoculture.
Which was a nearly impossible sell to the average Micronesian. A deliberate waste of valuable community land.
To sustain their way of life meant growing a variety of crops, not just copra.
A mix of trees and medicines and fruits and tools all interconnected at the root.
Cash might be a fine medium, but only if you can buy what you need with it. You don’t kill your survival for aesthetic.
That is, unless you’re Henry Nanpei.
And soon enough, he’s the leading copra salesman in all Pohnpeian history, even importing workers from the Mortlocks to expand his clan.
And by all accounts, he was one of the best bosses these Pacific plantations ever had. An aristocrat of the people, if you will.
Fighting for the well, the rights that any Pohnpeian could expect from their lord, I suppose.
And the more he grew, the more land he could buy. The more he bought, the more he could grow.
Before long, he was the most important man on the island. He even owned a boat.
With a 35 horsepower engine, no less. Something unheard of in early 1900's Micronesia.
It would be like an American owning a spaceship today.
But in 1917, a new apocalypse. The Japanese.
Germany would leave these islands, never to return. And in their wake flooded in an unprecedented migration.
Under this new leadership Micronesia faced the greatest challenge it had since those whalers.
Unlike the Germans and Spanish, who at the very most brought in a few dozen administrators and Melanesian police,
the Japanese saw these islands as extensions of their mainland society.
These were new fishing grounds, new farms, new land to sell to their post-industrialized poor. And most of all, naval bases.
At a time when Micronesia barely comprised twenty thousand people, the Empire of Japan brought in a hundred. Five to one.
And under this growing military dictatorship, Henry Nanpei did not achieve an independent Pohnpei.
But just as he’d done with the Spanish and Germans before them, he would work around those incoming Japanese.
And when they came for it, he would defend his system from them.
When the nahnmwarki of Kitti needed somewhere to hide, it was Henry who hid him.
Despite their political rivalry and the jealousies of wealth, he acted true to his tribal custom. Henry protected his lord.
And once the war ended for his service, that nahnmwarki would name him king.
He would give him his title, the Rohsa of Kitti. A title that in theory, Henry shouldn’t have been able to obtain.
Just like he shouldn't have had that land.
In 1927 with title secured, Henry Nanpei would die. But just as his life’s legacy was made with a will, so too would be his death’s.
He would return all of his land to the tribal system, but what’s more, he would protect it by law.
His grandchildren would not be taken advantage of as he’d done. And from now on, the lands of a Rohsa couldn’t be sold.
His people would never be charged rent. They would provide fruits. And their Rohsa would provide a feast.
The governments, businesses, and foreigners who’d build on this land would forever pay that Rohsa rent,
and in turn create a form of secular wealth that could perpetually protect these tribal positions.
To keep someone powerful enough to hide a nahnmwarki.
It might not have been perfect, but that was Henry’s legacy.
We’re now nearly a hundred years later and a new Rohsa has been crowned.
His name is William Hawley. Willy, before he took this crown.
Just like Henry before him, he wasn't the first in line to be Rohsa. His last name is no longer even Nanpei.
But Willy truly cared about Pohnpei. Put another way if the time ever came, you know he'd defend his system.
That's why the nahnmwarki chose him. Because he is the right man for the job.
And the reason I think that is because when I went to go visit that new Rohsa at his home in Kitti,
he said the reason he invited me there was so that he could send you a message.
Because he believes that you personally could help save Micronesia from the next round of apocalypse.
And here's the kicker, if you do? If you can help.
There's a very good chance that you'll be invited to visit one of the most beautiful private islands on earth.
And there's no catch to that one. But I'll save that for the next episode.
This is Rare Earth.