The country shares maritime boundaries with Wake Island to the north,[note 2] Kiribati to the southeast, Nauru to the south, and the Federated States of Micronesia to the west.

[20] The Austronesian settlers introduced Southeast Asian crops, including coconuts, giant swamp taro, and breadfruit, as well as domesticated chickens throughout the Marshall Islands.

[23] They navigated by using the stars for orientation and initial course setting, but also developed a piloting technique of interpreting disruptions in ocean swells to determine the location of low coral atolls below the horizon.

He observed that the Marshallese lived in thatched-roof huts, but their villages did not include the large ornate meeting houses found in other parts of Micronesia.

He learned that Marshallese families practiced infanticide after the birth of a third child as a form of population planning due to frequent famines.

[29][30] On January 2, 1528, the expedition of Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón landed on an uninhabited island, possibly in Ailinginae Atoll, where they resupplied and stayed for six days.

[39] On June 25, 1788, the British ships had peaceful interactions and traded with islanders at Mili Atoll;[40] their meeting may have been the first contact between Europeans and Marshallese since the Mendaña expedition of 1568.

[40] From the 1820s through the 1850s, the Marshall Islanders became increasingly hostile to western vessels, possibly because of violent punishments that sea captains exacted for theft as well as the abduction of Marshallese people for sale into slavery on Pacific plantations.

[41] One of the earliest violent encounters occurred in February 1824, when the inhabitants of Mili Atoll massacred marooned sailors from the American whaler Globe.

[48] By 1885, the German firms Hernsheim & Co. and Deutsche Handels- und Plantagen-Gesellschaft Der Südsee Inseln zu Hamburg controlled two-thirds of the trade.

During the second day of negotiations, Captain Bartholomäus von Werner [de] ordered his men to give military demonstrations which he later said were intended to "show the islanders, who have not seen anything like it before, the power of the Europeans.

"[54] On November 29, Werner signed a treaty with Kabua and several other Ralik Chain iroij which secured a German fuelling station at Jaluit and free use of the atoll's harbor.

In addition to controlling two-thirds of the Marshallese copra trade, the company had the authority to collect commercial license fees and an annual poll tax.

[64] The company's licensing fees and legal advantages pushed out American and British competition, creating a monopoly in the German Pacific colonies.

The civilian South Seas Government (南洋廳, Nan'yō-chō) set up its headquarters in Palau in April 1922 and administered the Marshalls until World War II.

[78] Japanese military planners initially discounted the Marshalls as too distant and indefensible for extensive fortification, but as Japan developed long-range bombers, the islands became useful as a forward base to attack Australia, British colonies, and the United States.

[86] The world's first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Mike", was tested at the Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands on November 1 (local date) in 1952, which produced significant fallout in the region.

[87] Over the years just one of over 60 islands was cleaned by the U.S. government, and the inhabitants are still waiting for the 2 billion dollars in compensation assessed by the Nuclear Claims Tribunal.

The United Democratic Party, running on a reform platform, won the 1999 parliamentary election, taking control of the presidency and cabinet.

[97] Following independence, the Marshall Islands continued to play a prominent role in the testing and launches of missiles and rockets for both military and commercial space purposes.

[100] In October 2011, the government declared that an area covering nearly 2,000,000 square kilometers (772,000 sq mi) of ocean shall be reserved as a shark sanctuary.

The Catholics are under the responsibility of the Apostolic Prefecture of the Marshall Islands (Praefectura Apostolica Insularum Marshallensium),[132] with headquarters at the Cathedral of the Assumption in Majuro, which was created by Pope John Paul II in 1993 through the papal bull Quo expeditius.

The Castle Bravo test of the first deployable thermonuclear bomb had an unforeseen additional nuclear reactions involving lithium-7 that resulted in the explosion being over twice as large as predicted.

The following senators are in the legislative body: The Compact of Free Association with the United States gives the U.S. sole responsibility for international defense of the Marshall Islands.

[153] The International Monetary Fund reported in mid-2016 that the economy of the Republic had expanded by about 0.5 percent in the Fiscal Year 2015 thanks to an improved fisheries sector.

Following the 2015 seizure of the MV Maersk Tigris, the United States announced that its treaty obligation to defend the Marshall Islands did not extend to foreign-owned Marshallese flag vessels at sea.

[165] The United States Army maintains the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll.

Christine McMurray and Roy Smith wrote in Diseases of Globalization: Socioeconomic Transition and Health that this could potentially weaken the children's English skills.

On cable TV, most programs are shown two weeks later than in North America but news in real time can be viewed on CNN, CNBC and BBC.

[193] The Marshall Islands National Telecommunications Authority (NTA) provides telephone, cable TV (MHTV), FAX, cellular and Internet services.