PROFILE
Region: Oceania
Climate: Wet, Tropical, Humid
Leader(s): Baldwin Lonsdale, since 2014 (at time of writing)
Population: 272.264
Capital: Port Vila
Largest City: Port Vila
Currency: Vanuatu Vatu
Languages: Bislama, French, English
Currency: Vanuatu Vatu
Languages: Bislama, French, English
Independence: 1980, from France and the United Kingdom
Territories or Colonies: None
Territories or Colonies: None
HISTORY OF VANUATU
THE FACTS
Vanuatu is a small island country in the Melanesian region of Oceania. The Melanesian region, which also includes the sovereign states of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, as well as the French territory New Caledonia. Vanuatu is made up of many islands stretched across the South Pacific.
The residents of Vanuatu speak English, French and an English creole called Bislama. A creole is a language that uses much of the vocabulary and maybe a bit of the grammar of a different language (usually a colonial language like Dutch, English, French or Spanish). These languages come about when often disenfranchised groups that are unified under colonial rule have to communicate with one another. What makes creoles different from pidgins is that creoles continue to be spoken as a first language for many generations and may even become the official language as in the case of Vanuatu or more famously Haiti. There are no pidgin languages that are official languages.
BEFORE EUROPEAN CONTACT (2000 BCE-1606)
Usually the first time period I cover starts with ???? because it’s unclear when people settled in that exact region. Archaeologists know, but I don’t think that’s super important to the history. However, Vanuatu is a special case because the Melanesian region is the youngest region on Earth. People began in Africa and slowly moved to Eurasia, the second oldest continent. Then people crossed the land bridge into the new world, the third oldest continent, but it wasn’t until pretty late in the game (I mean like five or six thousand years ago that people moved into Australia through another land bridge that connected many of the Indonesian islands. Then a bit later the many islands of the pacific were settled by the Polynesian and Melanesian peoples.
Usually the first time period I cover starts with ???? because it’s unclear when people settled in that exact region. Archaeologists know, but I don’t think that’s super important to the history. However, Vanuatu is a special case because the Melanesian region is the youngest region on Earth. People began in Africa and slowly moved to Eurasia, the second oldest continent. Then people crossed the land bridge into the new world, the third oldest continent, but it wasn’t until pretty late in the game (I mean like five or six thousand years ago that people moved into Australia through another land bridge that connected many of the Indonesian islands. Then a bit later the many islands of the pacific were settled by the Polynesian and Melanesian peoples.
As history is only history when the written word comes into things, this first section will get a bit archaeological.
Archaeologists have found pottery and other signs of human life like burial mounds, as well as stories spoken by the native people that have pointed to the islands of Vanuatu being populated in the 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE, around the time of Ancient Egypt, for a chronological marker.
Many of the traditions and customs of the islands have been observed by Europeans, who accurately guessed these things had been going on for quite some time. An interesting example is the land diving tradition on Pentecost Island in the country, which many believe is the precursor of Bungee jumping. The tradition is that young boys would prove their manliness by jumping off a hundred foot scaffolding with a rope made of reeds into a dirt slope. The rope would catch him and he wouldn’t die.
It’s basically super legit bungee jumping with a taut cord that could break if too dry and a rickety 100 foot climb. The Islanders actually sued the inventor of Bungee jumping for royalties, but lost.
I’m kind of frustrated that most of these posts start when the Europeans arrive and bring written history into the mix, but their usually isn’t enough information pre-arrival to say a lot. Obviously these countries had a rich history before colonization, but the definition of history, the study of the past, becomes a lot easier when people wrote things down.
EUROPEAN ARRIVAL (1606-1882)
In 1768 everything changed for the people of Vanuatu, as did for the people of most countries visited by Europeans. Oceania was in an interesting position as the last inhabited continent to be discovered by Europeans. Most European maps of the world just showed Australia as an amorphous blobby part of Antarctica that was escaping and the islands of the pacific were either not there or just guessed dots.
In 1768 everything changed for the people of Vanuatu, as did for the people of most countries visited by Europeans. Oceania was in an interesting position as the last inhabited continent to be discovered by Europeans. Most European maps of the world just showed Australia as an amorphous blobby part of Antarctica that was escaping and the islands of the pacific were either not there or just guessed dots.
In 1606 Europeans finally explored Australia by sea, and eventually made their way out into the pacific. Explorers charting Australia saw some of Vanuatu but didn’t think to check it out. The islands were rediscovered in 1768, an impossibly late year might I add to still be discovering new land. For some perspective, in nine years the US would come into existence.
In 1768, frenchly-named Louis Antoine de Bougainville charted them from afar in his ship but didn’t land on their shores because of…, well I’m not sure, perhaps apathy.
In 1774, British Captain Cook arrived. You may know his name if you’re familiar with Hawaiian history (as he visited there many times and eventually died after he accidentally crashed into their harbor a couple too many times. I guess too many Cooks spoiled their broth, and by too many I mean “one”. The Hawaiians stabbed him to death many times, which is now honored by a monument near the town of Captain Cook, Hawaii. That’s kind of fucked up right. He obviously angered the Hawaiians enough to stab him, but he gets a town named after him on the island. Okay.
Well, five years before his death Captain Cook was fucking around the South Pacific when he spotted the islands Bougainville had spotted and named them the New Hebrides, after the (Old) Hebrides, an island group in Scotland.
But still at this time European interest in the South Pacific wasn’t really all that high, except for Australia which proved to be a convenient, massive landmass to keep all of their prisoners.
In 1789 The Bounty stopped by en route to Tahiti, after mutinizing (I know that’s not a word, sadly) their captain, Captain Bligh (who is such a fucking badass. He was cast adrift in a life raft and sailed 3600 miles to Indonesia with little food and no sails. Damn.) The mutineers decided to screw their boring mission of shipping some goods from Point A to Point B and instead decided to romp around the South Pacific stopping by Vanuatu on their way to have sex with people in Tahiti, and live there forever, except for a group of them who founded the colony of the Pitcairn islands, a british dependency with 47 people now that is utterly fascinating and I encourage you to read about.
Europeans left the islands relatively alone for a while longer until in 1839 British missionaries (that’s where the name Pentecost Island comes from) arrived on Erromango Island, an island abundant with Sandalwood trees and voted “Best Smelling Island in 1839”. The missionaries were greeted in one of the two ways missionaries are usually greeted.
Greeting #1: Oh, hello white people. I hear you want to build a settlement on our land. As long as we share the resources and you are kind to our culture, you’re welcome to. You have a crazy religion that makes no sense, but hey, I’m open minded. I’ll give this a try.
Greeting #2: Get out. We don’t want you here.
They got the second one, but persisted and persisted until they forcefully introduced Presbyterianism to the islanders. The missionaries banned many of their fun sounding rituals including smoking, getting drunk, polygamy, performing ancestral ceremonies and gaining social currency by killing pigs. They also banned dancing because I guess Vanuatu was some sort of colonial Footloose.
One of the few things I can understand them banning was the practice of eating people, which wasn’t just a racist thing that the English pretended the natives did. They actually did that.
The English, always bastions of cultural tolerance, banned most of these things because they were weird, but to be fair certain English customs of the time were weird like wearing powdered wigs and dancing around Maypoles.
The missionaries slowly started realizing the profit to be had in an island paradise with sandalwood and mangos and other tropical commodities the west wanted.
The westerners began setting up cotton plantations, as well as other commodities when cotton’s price plummeted.
Now, Vanuatu was an interesting case in that there were two colonial powers. The British who had mostly come from Britain’s penal colony in Australia had began populating the island, but the French catholic missionaries had started to outnumber the Brits.
The islanders didn’t care and wanted everybody to leave, but that wouldn’t happen for another hundred years.
The fact that the British and French couldn’t decide who was in charge became increasingly problematic. British marriages weren’t recognized, while French marriages weren’t recognized. They had seperate supply ships and mail ships, and everything was really inconvenient. When the car was invented they drove on different sides of the road. The Brits drove on the left, while the French drove on the right, which ended in many a collision I would expect.
Before then, in 1889, the town of Franceville (now Port Vila) decided it had enough and declared independence from France and Britain. This came after the French and the British tried to establish the colony as a joint-venture, but that fell through. Franceville had enough and elected their own president. They also allowed anyone over 18 to vote (including women and natives) which was rare. Black people couldn’t vote in South Africa until 1994!
DUAL OWNERSHIP (1882-1960s)
In 1906, France and Britain decided they’d had enough too, and decided to change their colony into something called a condominium, which was a colony run by two colonial powers, that would share power in courts and legislative stuff. There was a lot of arguing about who should have more power France or Britain, but they finally figured out in 1922.
This system of government turned out to be a huge failure. The natives were shit outta luck, because they’re citizenship of France and Britain were revoked and they technically didn’t live anywhere. Laws passed by the French weren’t enforced by British cops and vice versa. Half the country was on the France, while the other half on the Pound. Everything was still a mess and the condominium just opened up another floodgate for the Europeans to squabble about power.
The French seemed to have the upper hand in the struggle for power, as they were working more and more of the land using workers from Vietnam, while the natives seemed to side more with the british because they didn’t like how the French were just bringing in foreigners to their land.
World War II came to the islands and some really bizarre stuff happened. The American army held the islands during the war and many interesting customs came of this. An island in Vanuatu created a religion based on the idea that a god masquerading as an American soldier. This is a prime example of what is called a Cargo Cult. Cargo Cults are basically when an isolated population takes some sort of western item (cargo) as some sign from god. An example of this would be the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, where a tribe of !Kung find a coke bottle dropped from a plane overhead. Cargo Cults however, are most prevalent in the south pacific. In Vanuatu, the island of Tanna is home to a Cargo Cult where Prince Philip is worshipped.
An example in fiction is the video game Far Cry 3, where the fictional South Pacific Rook Islands are overrun with pirates and the natives of the islands, the Rakyat, believe a warrior from “the northern kingdom” would come and defeat the evils of the island. The main character from Los Angeles comes to the island and lives out the prophecy.
By the 1950s, the British and French had stopped totally governing the island and were acting more as a majority owner of the land. They just wanted the money from the cash crops like Coconuts and Pineapples (see Lana’i Plantation in Hawai’i) and weren’t as interested in governing the islands.
In the 60s, the British wanted to leave the islands. They felt their colonial period was over and wanted to focus on other problems back home, but the French were like “no, why?” They had colonial holdings all over the pacific and they were worried that giving up the New Hebrides would make other islands want to have independence like French Polynesia and New Caledonia (which France still owns). The British eventually got their way. They backed the Vanua’aku Party who wanted independence.
INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT AND SUCCESS (1960s-PRESENT)
The Vanua’aku Party told the European landowners to git, and they obliged (the French begrudgingly). The Vanua’aku Party could now fully govern the group of islands. Independence wasn’t as smooth as I made it sound though.
The Vanua’aku Party told the European landowners to git, and they obliged (the French begrudgingly). The Vanua’aku Party could now fully govern the group of islands. Independence wasn’t as smooth as I made it sound though.
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| Jimmy Stevens, Nagriamel Leader |
The problem with island nations like Vanuatu is that governing them can be a chore. Take say, Germany. Germany isn’t too big, a bit smaller than California. If you want to go Dusseldorf in the west to Dresden in the north, that’s not too much of a chore. Even island nations like Barbados, things aren’t complicated because Barbados is limited to just the Island of Barbados, so getting around is pretty easy. Countries like Vanuatu have it rough though. Many of the islands are cut off from the central government at Port Vila, so independence movements are much easier.
This happened during the time of independence. The island of Tanna, the one from before who has worshippers of Prince Philip, as well as the largest island Espiritu Santo both tried to either become independent countries (which would be rough considering Tanna has only about 28,000 people, the population of some neighborhoods), or become colonies again.
Finally, in 1980 Vanuatu became a country, independent from France and England. This is where the story ends, but Vanuatu is still going strong. They’ve had their fair share of problems, as any former colony has, but increased tourism and infrastructure creation is helping the country become a western tourism destination.
VANUATU FACTS
-Pentecost Island is home to the practice of Land Diving, similar to bungee jumping.
-Tanna Island is home to a Cargo Cult that worships Prince Philip.
-Only the government and kastom owners (which is a pidgin word meaning “custom”. Basically these owners are religious officials) can own land. If you aren’t a kastom owner or the government you’re only allowed to lease land for “the productive lifespan of a coconut palm” which is about 75 years.
-Vanuatu’s olympic team could fit in a small sedan, at just five people.
