asserted was in turn the successor entity for a supposed Kingdom of Humanity established between the two world wars on Meads Island, allegedly by the son of the British captain. This claim to this would-be micronation fell dormant after 1972, when several members of the group drowned in a typhoon. Military conflicts and diplomatic dialogues The following are political divisions for the Spratly Islands claimed by various area nations (in alphabetical order): Brunei: Part of Brunei's Exclusive Economic Zone China: Part of Sansha, Hainan Malaysia: Part of Sabah state Philippines: Part of Kalayaan, Palawan province Taiwan: Part of Kaohsiung municipality Vietnam: Part of Trường Sa, Khánh Hòa Province In the 19th century, Europeans found that Chinese fishermen from Hainan annually sojourned on the Spratly islands for part of the year, while in 1877 it was the British who launched the first modern legal claims to the Spratly Islands. When the Spratly Islands and Paracels were surveyed by Germany in 1883, China issued protests against them. The 1887 Chinese-Vietnamese Boundary convention signed between France and China after the Sino-French War said that China was the owner of the Spratly and Paracel islands. China sent naval forces on inspection tours in 1902 and 1907 and placed flags and markers on the islands. The Qing dynasty's successor state, the Republic of China, claimed the Spratly and Paracel islands under the jurisdiction of Hainan. In 1933, France asserted its claims to the Spratly and Paracel Islands on behalf of its then-colony French Indochina. It occupied a number of the Spratly Islands, including Taiping Island, built weather stations on two of the islands, and administered them as part of French Indochina. This occupation was protested by the Republic of China (ROC) government because France admitted finding Chinese fishermen there when French warships visited nine of the islands. In 1935, the ROC government also announced a sovereignty claim on the Spratly Islands. Japan occupied some of the islands in 1939 during World War II, and it used the islands as a submarine base for the occupation of Southeast Asia. During the Japanese occupation, these islands were called Shinnan Shoto (), literally the New Southern Islands, and together with the Paracel Islands (), they were put under the governance of the Japanese colonial authority in Taiwan. Japan occupied the Paracels and the Spratly Islands from February 1939 to August 1945. Japan annexed the Spratly Islands via Taiwan's