Inspired by SRL's recent Palau and Nauru WCCs, and now (this was the last) every single modern-day UN recognised sovereign state has it's own WCC. The Republic of the Marshall Islands (Aolepān Aorōkin M̧ajeļ) is a Pacific islands nation located above the Equator, with maritime borders shared with (the Federal Republic of) Micronesia, Kiribati and the Northern Mariana Islands, the last being a US Territory. It currently has a population of a little over 53,000 people as of May 2018.
(left) Flag of the Marshall Islands, in use since 1979; (right) Official emblem of the Marshall Islands (1979-)
History
The atolls and islands of the Marshall Islands have been inhabited for at least 2,000 years, when the last wave of Melanesian and Polynesian settlers from Southeast Asia migrated to the islands. For centuries the islanders remained virtually isolated from the outside world, trading with other islands by boat until their first recording by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan on his last voyage in 1519. Eventually Spain claimed the islands in 1592, along with what would later be Palau, Micronesia, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, and these islands were administered from Manila in the Spanish Philippines. The islands' isolated status meant Spanish rule was mostly, only nominal, and other European powers' recognition of the claim was only given in 1874, centuries later.
Map of the German colonial territories in the Pacific, 1914; the Marshall Islands are the easternmost island group in the area marked 1, which became the Japanese South Pacific mandate in 1920; 2 and 3 ([German] New Guinea and Nauru) became Australian mandates, and 4 ([Western] Samoa) to New Zealand.
In 1885, the German Empire purchased the islands from Spain for 4.5 million US Dollars, and established a protectorate over them, as well as the trading post of Majuro, which remains the capital today. German rule came from nearby German New Guinea; it also purchased the other (formerly) Spanish Pacific islands (Micronesia, Palau, Marianas) after the US took Spain's administrative centres of the Philippines and Guam during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Like Spain, German colonial rule was relatively lax and indirect, with local chieftains continuing to have de facto rule. When WWI broke out in August 1914, the Japanese Empire, an ally of Britain, joined the war and helped seize the German Pacific colonies, including the Marshall Islands, with minimal trouble, setting up administrative facilities at Majuro that same year.
The United States 7th Infantry Division storming an island in the Battle of Kwajalein (Jan-Feb 1944), which took place in the territory of the modern day Marshall Islands.
After the end of the war, in 1920 the League of Nations granted Japan a mandate over all the German Pacific colonial territories north of the Equator that it had occupied in the war, now known collectively as the South Pacific Mandate. The islands were heavily fortified by the Imperial Japanese Navy in the buildup to WWII in the Pacific region, and when war was declared on the US following Pearl Harbour in December 1941, these islands were used as a launchpad to attack and occupy Australian and US territories nearby, such as Guam, Wake Island and Nauru. The US Army developed a strategy of island hopping, and from mid-1943 onwards the Japanese gradually fell back across the Pacific, albeit with hugely disproportionate US casualties, from storming well-fortified islands with fanatical defenders. By November 1944 the Marshall Islands were firmly in US hands, and after Japan's surrender in September 1945, the United Nations granted the US what are today the nations of Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, as well as the US territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands in 1947.
The Castle Bravo nuclear bomb test, 1954; the first successful US hydrogen bomb test was also conducted in the Marshall Islands in 1952.
The islands are notable for having been the site of over 60 nuclear bomb tests by the US, such as those at Bikini Atoll (1946), and the Castle Bravo bomb (1954), which resulted in whole communities being evacuated permanently from their homes. From 1965 onwards, the Congress of Micronesia pushed for greater political autonomy for the trusteeship, and self-government was given to the communities of these islands. In 1979 the Marshall Islands became independent; it joined the UN in 1981, and attained full sovereignty under a Compact of Free Association (giving islanders and US citizens easier access to immigration to and from the US respectively) in 1986, with the UN trusteeship being formally dissolved in 1990; Palau and Micronesia also followed and became independent nations, with Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands staying as US territories. Today the Marshall Islands remains a nation with close trade and diplomatic ties to the US, but recently rising sea levels caused by man-made climate change has begun to threaten the islands on an existential level.
Currency
During colonial rule by Spain, Germany and Japan, the islands' de facto currency was the Real/Peseta, Mark and Yen respectively. Since independence in 1979, the Marshall Islands has continued to use the United States Dollar (USD) as it's currency, which has been done since the end of WWII. Circulating currency consists of 100% US coins and notes, but the Marshall Islands has issued commemorative coins in it's own name in brass and silver, with denominations of (mostly) 5, 10 and 50 Dollars.
(left) Common obverse of Marshall islands commemoratives, bearing the seal of the country; (centre) example of a Marshall Islands commemorative (this one is for the 50th anniversary of D-Day); (right) a brass 10 Dollar example of another commemorative coin (50th anniversary of VE day).
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/marshall-1.html
