British protectorate over the southern and central Solomon Islands, first declared in June 1893 by Captain Herbert Gibson of HMS Curacoa, who hoisted the British flag and read proclamations on twenty-one islands. Its territory grew via a sequence of proclamations through 1897-1900: Bellona, Rennell, and Sikaiana added 1897; the Santa Cruz group, Reef Islands, and outliers added 1898; and, following the Samoa Tripartite Convention of 1899 (in which Germany relinquished its claims east and south-east of Bougainville to Britain in exchange for British recognition of Germany's claim to Western Samoa), Choiseul, Ysabel, the Shortlands, and Fauro were formally added by an October 1900 proclamation. Administered as part of the British Western Pacific Territories, with the capital at Tulagi until its destruction during the WWII Guadalcanal campaign (August 1942), after which Honiara developed as the postwar administrative center (formalized as capital 1952).
Occupied by Japan from January 1942 during WWII (the Guadalcanal campaign, among the war's bitterest fighting, was fought here 1942-1945); moved toward self-government from the 1960s (Legislative and Executive Councils from 1960, a 1970 Governing Council, a 1974 Westminster-style constitution with Solomon Mamaloni as first Chief Minister), becoming internally self-governing and fully independent as Solomon Islands under the Solomon Islands Act 1978.
The standard economic and political history of the Solomons spanning precolonial contact through the end of the protectorate era in 1978; confirmed on Open Library.