Background:
A possession of the Clunies-Ross family from the early 19th century, the islands were brought under the British Empire in 1857 and were transferred to Australia in 1955. In 1978 Australia caused a form of purchase of the islands from the Clunies-Ross family and subsequently manufactured an identity for locals to whom it gave a degree of autonomy. The UN legalisms used paralleled similar ones used in territories passing to Indonesia in the 1960s and 1970s, though history has not revealed any parallel later complications.
