Tafea is the southernmost of the six

provinces A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of no ...

. The name is an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for the five main islands that make up the province: Tanna, Aneityum, Futuna, Erromango and Aniwa.

History

Unlike the other provinces of Vanuatu, the territorial integrity of this administrative unit has been unchanged since the times of the Condominium, when it was called ''Southern District'', or ''Tanna'' after the main island. Only the capital moved from

Lenakel Lenakel is the largest town on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu. It has a population of 1,473. It is located on the west coast of the island near the administrative capital of Isangel and serves as a major port of entry. Language It is the cente ...

to nearby

Isangel Isangel is a town in Vanuatu. Located on the island of Tanna, it is the provincial administrative capital of Tafea Province. Population The town has a population of about 1,200, most of them Melanesians; the major languages of the area are Le ...

, less than two kilometers more southeast. A secessionist movement began in the 1970s, and the Nation of Tanna was proclaimed on 24 March 1974. While the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

were more open to allowing its holdings in Vanuatu independence, it was opposed by the French colonists and finally suppressed by the Anglo-French Condominium authorities on 29 June 1974. In 1980, there was another attempt to secede, declaring the Tafea Nation on 1 January 1980, its name coming from the initials of the five islands that were to be part of the nation (Tanna, Aniwa, Futuna, Erromango and Aneityum). British forces intervened on 26 May 1980, allowing the islands to become part of the newly independent nation of Vanuatu on 30 July 1980.

Geography

The province has a population of 32,5402009 Census Summary release final
- Government of Vanuatu people and an area of 1,628 km². The main island, though second to

Erromango Erromango is the fourth largest island in the Vanuatu archipelago. With a land area of it is the largest island in Tafea Province, the southernmost of Vanuatu's six administrative regions. Name The Exonym and endonym, endonym for Erromango in Er ...

in area, is Tanna, with some 80 percent of the province population, with the provincial capital of

, and the largest village of

, both close together on the southwest coast. The three larger islands are

Melanesia Melanesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from Indonesia's New Guinea in the west to Fiji in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea. The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Va ...

n, but the smaller two, Aniwa and Futuna, also known under the collective term ''Erronan Islands'', are

Polynesian outlier Polynesian outliers are a number of culturally Polynesian societies that geographically lie outside the main region of Polynesian influence, known as the Polynesian Triangle; instead, Polynesian outliers are scattered in the two other Pacific s ...

s. Futuna is sometimes called West Futuna to distinguish it from

Futuna Island, Wallis and Futuna Futuna (; ) is an island in the Pacific Ocean occupying area of with a population of 10,912. It belongs to the French overseas collectivity (''collectivité d'outre-mer'', or ''COM'') of Wallis and Futuna. It is one of the Hoorn Islands or Î ...

. The island of Tanna has the world's most accessible volcano,

Mount Yasur Mount Yasur is a volcano on Tanna Island, Vanuatu, high above sea level, on the coast near Sulphur Bay, northeast of the taller Mount Tukosmera, which was active in the Pleistocene. It has a largely unvegetated pyroclastic cone with a nearly c ...

, with 1,084 meters the highest peak of the province.

Aniwa Island Aniwa is a small island in the southernmost province of Tafea, Vanuatu. As a coral island (a raised coral atoll), it rises a mere 42 m above sea level. In the northwest is ''Itcharo (Tiaro) lagoon'', which is open to the sea. The nearest large ...

is the only

coral Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and ...

island, the other four are

volcanic A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...

and reach much higher elevations than Aniwa.

Anatom Aneityum (also known as Anatom or Keamu) is the southernmost island of Vanuatu, in the province of Tafea. Geography Aneityum is the southernmost island of Vanuatu (not counting the Matthew and Hunter Islands, which are disputed with New Caledon ...

is the southernmost island of Vanuatu (not counting the remote, tiny and uninhabited

Matthew and Hunter Islands Hunter Island and Matthew Island are two small and uninhabited high islands in the South Pacific, located east of New Caledonia and south-east of Vanuatu archipelago. Hunter Island and Matthew Island, apart, are claimed by Vanuatu as part o ...

, to the southeast, which are disputed with New Caledonia, but which are considered by the people of Anatom Island part of their custom ownership). Its southeastern cape ''Nétchan Néganneaing'' is the southernmost point of land in Vanuatu, more southerly than the southern satellite islet

Inyeug Inyeug Island is a small uninhabited island in Tafea Province of Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean. "Inyeug" means "Small Island" in a local language. Inyueg is also called Mystery Island by the cruise ships that regularly visit the island. The islan ...

. The latter, however, is surrounded Intao Reef, that extends even further south, albeit submerged, thus being the southernmost feature of Vanuatu.

Islands

References

Citations

Footnotes

External links

* {{Coord, 19, 30, S, 169, 30, E, region:VU-TA_type:adm1st_source:GNS-enwiki, display=title Provinces of Vanuatu States and territories established in 1994 Former unrecognized countries Former countries in Oceania Island countries