Papua (Concert of Europe)

Papua is a territory of, located in : more precisely, it consists of the southeastern part of the island of New Guinea and more than 600 minor islands directly to its east, sharing land borders with to its north and the  to its west. It is separated from mainland Australia by the Torres Strait. Papua was visited by Europeans as early as the 16th century, but it rough landscape and warlike natives made colonization possible only in the 19th century, when this part of the island was claimed by and later made into an Australian territory.

The territory's landscape is diverse and extremely rugged: it is characterized by highlands and tall mountains in the north, on the border with German New Guinea, and thick tropical rainforests and vast lowlands in the lowlands: there are a number of active volcanoes, and eruptions are somewhat frequent. Some areas are so inaccessible that can be reached only on foot or by areoplane. As infrastructure is almost impossible to develop, the economy of Papua is quite primitive, and depends largely on tourism, agriculture and fishing. Most of the population is indigenous, belonging to one of the more than one five hundred ethno-cultural groups of the territory, each one speaking its own language: English and Tok Pisin (an English-based creole) are used as lingua franca by the government.