Tuvalu ( ) is an archipelagic country in the Polynesian sub-region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to 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 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. The 2022 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,643, making it the 2nd least populated country in the United Nations, exceeding only Niue and the Vatican City in population. Tuvalu's total land area is . It is the 4th smallest country in the world, the only smaller nations being Monaco, Naoero and Vatican City.
The first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. 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 explorer Álvaro de Mendaña became the first European known 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, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819, with the islands later known collectively as the Ellice Islands. In 1892, a British protectorate was proclaimed over the islands and the nearby Gilbert Islands. They were incorporated into the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony in 1916, subject to a resident commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands.
A referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; 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 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 the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu 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
Pre-colonial history The origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 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 *walu 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, 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 1765, 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, 167–198Laumua Kofe, Palagi and Pastors, Tuvalu: A History, Ch. 15, (USP / Tuvalu government) 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 Rebeccas cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.A Directory for the Navigation of the Pacific Ocean: With Description of Its Coasts, Islands, Etc. from the Strait of Magalhaens to the Arctic Sea (1851)
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 by the frigate Maria Reigersberg under captain Koerzen, and the corvette Pollux under captain C. Eeg, 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.
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 in a canoe 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. Archibald Wright 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.
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.Maude, H.E. (1981) Slavers in Paradise, Stanford University Press, . On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the "blackbirders".Doug Munro, The Lives and Times of Resident Traders in Tuvalu: An Exercise in History from Below, (1987) 10(2) Pacific Studies 73 The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray,Murray A.W. (1876). Forty Years' Mission Work. London: Nisbet 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.
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 Edward 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 1890s, 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. After the high point in the 1880s, 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