The Solomon Islands are made up of nearly 1000 islands stretching across about 900 miles in a south-easterly direction. In AD 1567 the Spaniard Alvaro de Meñdana landed on Guadacanal and named the islands after the Biblical King Solomon who was renowned for his vast wealth, although in fact they turned out to have no precious minerals.

Until the 1860s there was very little contact between Europeans and Solomon Islanders. The British ship HMS Curaçao sailed there in 1865. During this voyage Julius Brenchley made a collection of ethnographic objects from the region. By the 1880s the Solomon Islands had become the main labour source for the cotton and sugar plantations of Fiji and Queensland, Australia. In some cases recruiters forced islanders to go with them by locking them below deck to stop them leaping over board.

In 1893 the Solomon Islands became a British protectorate, partly to prevent them being annexed by the French. The forcible recruiting was stopped during the first years of the 20th century. Solomon Islanders were deported from Australia back to the Solomons, though many islanders who had been indentured labourers on Fiji decided to stay there after their release. Charles Woodford was the first resident commissioner of the Solomon Islands (from 1896-1915) and made extensive ethnographical notes and collections during his time on the islands.