Archaeological evidence shows that the island was settled at least by the early years of the first millennium AD. This includes the city of
Leluh that existed from about 1250 to 1850 AD, and in its heyday had a population of about 1,500 and covered some . It featured burial pyramids for the nobility.
French visitors The French
corvette S. M.
La Coquille, arrived at Okat Harbor on 3 June 1824 and visited until 15 June 1824. Commanded by
Louis-Isidore Duperrey,
La Coquille, on its circumnavigation of the earth (1822–1825) with
Jules Dumont d'Urville as second.
René-Primevère Lesson also traveled on
Coquille as a naval doctor and naturalist.
La Coquille anchored in Kosrae for ten days. During this visit, several crew walked across the island and visited the island of Lelu.
Spanish colonization The first recorded sighting by Westerners was by the Spanish navigator
Álvaro de Saavedra on 14 September 1529 when trying to return from
Tidore to
New Spain. The island was under nominal Spanish sovereignty since 1668, but it was not effectively occupied until 1885. By the time of the island's first contact with European travelers in 1824, Kosrae had a highly stratified society, typical of the surrounding islands of the time. Its cultural features included matrilineal lineage and clans, with a feudal structure of "nobles" controlling land worked by "commoners" and settlements consisting of small groups of close relatives sharing a single cook house. The first missionary post was established by
Congregationalists in 1852, and virtually the whole island had converted to Christianity by the 1870s. Today, many sects of Christianity are represented on Kosrae, and religion still plays an integral role in culture. The notorious captain and
blackbirder Bully Hayes was shipwrecked on Kosrae on March 15, 1874, when his ship
Leonora was caught in
Utwe harbor during a storm. Bully Hayes made his home in Utwe for seven months, during which he terrorized the local people. In September 1874,
HMS Rosario (under the command of Captain Dupuis) arrived to investigate the claims against Hayes. He was arrested, but then escaped in a 14-foot boat, built of timber from the wreck of the
Leonora. His treasure may have been left behind, The existence of this buried money is part of the myths that surround Hayes. In 1885, after a dispute known as the
Carolines Question between the
Spanish Empire and the
German Empire, finally resolved under the arbitration of
Pope Leo XIII, the
Spanish Navy took effective control of the island.
German and Japanese rule (1899–1945) After the
Spanish–American War of 1898, the defeated Spanish sold the Caroline Islands to Germany for 25 million pesetas (17 million German marks). The islands subsequently came under the control of the
Empire of Japan during
World War I. Extensive economic improvements took place during the Japanese
South Seas Mandate that lasted from 1919 until 1947. The island was practically run by a few missionaries who converted the population;
Willard Price, when he visited in the 1930s, reported that the island had no jail, there had been no murders in sixty years, and alcohol and tobacco were unheard of. The island was fortified by the Japanese during
World War II, but no battles occurred on Kosrae. The Japanese
garrison commanded by Lieutenant-General Yoshikazu Harada consisted of 3,811
IJA men including a company of
tanks and 700
IJN men. Tunnel bunkers that have multiple entrances were dug into the island's interior peaks and most can still be explored today.
United States rule (1945) The island became part of the vast US
Naval Base Marshall Islands. In 1945, administration over Kosrae passed to the United States, which ruled the island as part of the
Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Aid and investment increased from the 1960s. When the Micronesian constitution was defeated in the TTPI districts of
Palau and the
Marshall Islands, Kosrae joined the remaining districts (
Yap,
Chuuk and
Pohnpei) to form the
Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). Kosrae is the only single-island FSM state (whereby the seven or eight small nearshore islands within the fringing reef, most importantly
Lelu Island, are subsumed under the main island), while the other three states are each composed of many islands. Until 1977, Kosrae was subdivided into districts or villages at the sub-municipality level: • Lelu (consisting of
Lelu Island only) • Yetanleluh. sometimes referred to as Neminleluh (mainland part of today's Lelu municipality with Tofol, the state capital) • Tafunsak (roughly corresponding to today's Tafunsak municipality) • Malem (roughly corresponding to today's Malem municipality) • Utwe (roughly corresponding to today's Utwe municipality) By 1980, five municipalities had been created from the former villages or districts: • Lelu (the villages of Lelu district (island) and Yetanleluh) • Tafunsak (the northeastern part of Ualung or Tafunsak district) • Walung (the southwestern part of Tafunsak district) • Malem (eastern part of Ualung or Malem district) • Utwe (the southern part of Ualung or Utwe district) The number of municipalities has subsequently been reduced to four (by integrating Walung into Tafunsak). ==Geography==