Back in the 90s, I wrote 6,000 words for the Village Voice on the Republic of Nauru - which was roughly two words for each inhabitant of the world's third smallest state. As I explained to the editor, I was hoping to do a follow up on the PRC on the same basis, at a dollar a word!
For those of you who missed this masterpiece, Nauru was occupied by the Germans but then after WWI by the Australians on behalf of the British Empire. Its attraction to these colonial powers was that it was an isolated coral island which was seabirds' only roosting (and shitting) place for thousands of miles. It was covered in guano, which was pretty much all dug up and exported to fertilize Australian agriculture.
Becoming independent at the tail end, as it where, of the shit trove, the Nauruans sued Australia and won substantial financial settlements from Canberra but discover that there was shit in more than Avian forms. While the islanders briefly had the highest per capita GDP in the world, their financial advisors did what bankers and consultants do dissipated their wealth on real state made from almost soluble concrete and even a West End Musical
Now broke, but still with a UN vote, and stuck on an island stripped of most of its surface, Canberra used them to exorcise their (racist) immigrant problem and paid them to hold deported refugees. Now they are reclaiming their heritage and have changed their name (back) to Naoero. their population has quadrupled but it is the third smallest state in the UN after Tuvalu, about to go under to climate change and sea rise, and the Vatican, with its historically low declared birth rate.
it is worth looking up as test case in national sovereignty - and of Australia's spurious anti-Colonial pretensions.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/03/nauru-officially-changes-i...
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