Vanuatu

Vanuatu (ˌvɑːnuˈɑːtuː or vænˈwɑːtuː ; vanuatu), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (République de Vanuatu; Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country in Melanesia, located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east of New Guinea, southeast of Solomon Islands, and west of Fiji. Vanuatu was first inhabited by Melanesian people. The first Europeans to visit the islands were a Spanish expedition led by Portuguese navigator Fernandes de Queirós, who arrived on the largest island, Espíritu Santo, in 1606. Queirós claimed the archipelago for Spain, as part of the colonial Spanish East Indies, and named it La Austrialia del Espíritu Santo. In the 1880s, France and the United Kingdom claimed parts of the archipelago, and in 1906, they agreed on a framework for jointly managing the archipelago as the New Hebrides through an Anglo-French condominium. An independence movement arose in the 1970s, and the Republic of Vanuatu was founded in 1980. Since independence, the country has become a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, and the Pacific Islands Forum. Vanuatu's name derives from the word vanua ("land" or "home"), which occurs in several Austronesian languages, combined with the word tu, meaning "to stand" (from POc *tuqur). Together, the two words convey the independent status of the country. History of Vanuatu The history of Vanuatu before European colonisation is mostly obscure because of the lack of written sources up to that point, and because only limited archaeological work has been conducted; Vanuatu's volatile geology and climate is also likely to have destroyed or hidden many prehistoric sites. Archaeological evidence gathered since the 1980s supports the theory that the Vanuatuan islands were first settled about 3,000 years ago, in the period roughly between 1100 BC and 700 BC. These were almost certainly people of the Lapita culture.