Nauru became rich because it sat on one of the world’s purest and most valuable phosphate deposits — the key ingredient in fertiliser. When Nauruans took control of the mines after independence, money poured in and the tiny island briefly had one of the highest per-capita incomes on earth. For a time, it funded free services, no taxes and lavish public spending — a remarkable, if short-lived, resource boom

• GUEST: Stewart Firth, Research fellow at the Australian National University and author of Globalisation and Governance in the Pacific Islands
• PRODUCER: Ali Benton