After their European discovery by Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan (1521), the Marianas were visited frequently but were not colonized until 1668. In that year Jesuit missionaries changed the islands' name from Islas de los Ladrones (Thieves' Islands) in order to honour Mariana of Austria, then regent of Spain. The Jesuits then began to forcibly convert the native Chamorro people to Roman Catholicism. Guam was ceded to the United States following the Spanish-American War (1898), and the Northern Marianas were sold to Germany in 1899. Occupied by Japan in 1914, the Northern Marianas became a Japanese mandate from the League of Nations after 1919. Seized by the United States in World War II, they were prepared as forward bases for the invasion of Japan but were never used as such. The islands were part of a trusteeship granted to the United States by the United Nations in 1947; in 1978 they chose to become a self-governing commonwealth and achieved this formal status upon the dissolution of the trust territory in 1986.

The economy of the Marianas is largely based on subsistence agriculture, with some income from copra and services to U.S. military installations; cattle are also raised. The population is descended from the pre-Spanish Chamorro with considerable intermingling of Spanish, Mexican, Philippine, German, and Japanese blood. Spanish cultural traditions are strong. Pop. (2007 est.) 257,500.