Tuvalu - Location Map (2013) - TUV - UNOCHA.svg

Tuvalu ( or ; formerly known as the Ellice Islands) is an island country and microstate in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean. Its islands are situated about midway between Hawaii and Australia. They lie east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji. Tuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls. They are spread out between the latitude of 5° and 10° south and between the longitude of 176° and 180°. They lie west of the International Date Line. Tuvalu has a population of 10,507 (2017 census). The total land area of the islands of Tuvalu is .

The first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians, according to well-established theories regarding a migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.

In 1568, Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña became the first European to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands to be a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.

A referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. Due to the results of the referendum, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975, and on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a Constitutional Monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.

The islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so rely heavily on imports and fishing for food, with fishing and tourism being principal parts of the economy. Because it is a small, low-lying island nation, the country is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.

History

Prehistory

The origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means "eight standing together" in Tuvaluan (compare to ''*walo'' meaning "eight" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.

An important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of ''te Pusi mo te Ali'' (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. ''Te Ali'' (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and ''te Pusi'' (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, for instance, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa,O'Brien, Talakatoa in ''Tuvalu: A History'', Chapter 1, Genesis whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.

Early contacts with other cultures

Tuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of Álvaro de Mendaña from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as ''Isla de Jesús'' (Spanish for "Island of Jesus") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Mendaña made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Mendaña's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named ''La Solitaria''.

Captain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as ''Lagoon Islands''.

The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la Rúa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate ''La Princesa'', when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as ''San Augustin''.Keith S. Chambers & Doug Munro, ''The Mystery of Gran Cocal: European Discovery and Mis-Discovery in Tuvalu'', 89(2) (1980) ''The Journal of the Polynesian Society'', 167–198 Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called ''The Mystery of Gran Cocal''.Kofe, Laumua; Palagi and Pastors in ''Tuvalu: A History'', Ch. 15 Mourelle's map and journal named the island ''El Gran Cocal'' ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.

In 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig ''Elizabeth'' sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.
In May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer ''Rebecca'', sailing under British colours,The De Peysters
. corbett-family-history.com passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau and Funafuti, which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the ''Rebecca''s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.

In 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the '' Mirny''. Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of ''La Coquille'', sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822–1825). A Dutch expedition (the frigate ''Maria Reigersberg'') found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825, and named the main island ( Fenua Tapu) as ''Nederlandsch Eiland''.

Whalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler ''Independence II'' has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.

For less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called "blackbirding" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. While some islanders were voluntary recruits, the "blackbirders" were notorious for enticing islanders on to ships with tricks, such as pretending to be Christian missionaries, as well as kidnapping islanders at gunpoint. The Rev. A. W. Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.

Christianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu.

In 1865, the Rev. A. W. Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (''Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu'') were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.

The islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.

Trading firms and traders

Trading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white / palagi traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.

In 1892, Captain Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis ( Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.

In the later 1890s and into first decade of the 20th century, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. From 1900, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.

Scientific expeditions and travellers

The United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.

In 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.

In 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the ''Janet Nicoll'', a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific.''The Circular Saw Shipping Line.''
Anthony G. Flude. 1993. (Chapter 7) The ''Janet Nicoll'' visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title ''The Cruise of the Janet Nichol'', together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.

In 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (''née'' Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht ''Le Tolna''. The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.

The boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called ''Darwin's Drill'', are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on '' The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs'' conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 "Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.

Charles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in ''Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney'' between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the ''General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti'', Hedley ''The Ethnology of Funafuti'', and ''The Mollusca of Funafuti''. Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published ''The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti''. William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in ''The insect fauna of Funafuti''.

Harry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC ''Albatross'' when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.

Colonial administration

The Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWTP ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.

Second World War

During the Second World War, the Ellice Islands were informally aligned with the Allies.
Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa