Choiseul Province for the island are Choiseul and Lauru. San Marcos is not commonly used at this present day. Choiseul Province was initially not part of the British Solomon Islands. Like Buka, Bougainville (both now part of Papua New Guinea's North Solomons Province), Santa Isabel, and the Ontong Islands, it was part of the German Solomon Islands in 1884. Fifteen years later, in 1899, Germany ceded Choiseul, Isabel and Ontong Java to the British to become part of the British Solomon Islands. In 1900, Charles Woodford, the Resident Commissioner for the Solomon Islands sailed to Choiseul via Isabel on a ship named
Choiseul Island under both protectorates, converting most of the population to Christianity. In the early 20th century several British and Australian firms began large-scale coconut planting. Choiseul was visited by Austrian anthropologist and photographer Hugo Bernatzik in 1932. Bernatzik documented some of the few remaining ancestral customs of the island people which are included in an ethnography that he published a few years later. He also took some photographs of the islanders and brought back a stone urn with carvings, reflecting a culture that he deemed was dying in contact with the modern world. During World War II, the Choiseul was occupied