Melanesia - Pacific Ocean
Vanuatu History and Facts in Brief
Other pages in my Vanuatu series
Bauerfield International (Port Vila) Airport
Bislama - Vanuatu Pidgin English
Cargo Cult - Tanna (island)
Éfaté - A
Éfaté - B
Port Vila - A
Port Vila - B
Port Vila Catholic Cathedral
Port Vila - Buses
Port Vila - (Our) accommodation
Tanna (island)
Vanuatu - Hand Crafts
Vanuatu
Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vanuatu, officially the Republic of Vanuatu
(French: République de Vanuatu), is an island
nation located in the South Pacific Ocean.
The archipelago is some 1,750 km (1,090 mi) east
of northern Australia, 500 km (310 mi) north-east
of New Caledonia, west of Fiji, and south of
the Solomon Islands.
The archipelago is of volcanic origin.
Vanuatu was first inhabited by Melanesian people.
Europeans began to settle in the area in
the late 18th century.
In the 1880s France and the United Kingdom
claimed parts of the country and in 1906
they agreed on a framework for jointly managing
the archipelago through a British-French
Condominium as the New Hebrides.
An independence movement was established
in the 1970s, and the Republic of
Vanuatu was created in 1980.
History
Many of the islands of Vanuatu have been
inhabited for thousands of years, with
the oldest traces of pottery dating back
to 1300 BC.
The earliest known settlement dates
back to around 4000 BC.
Ripablik blong Vanuatu
République de Vanuatu
Republic of Vanuatu |
 |
 |
| Flag |
Coat of arms |
|
|
Motto: "Long God yumi stanap" (In God we stand) |
|
Anthem: Yumi, Yumi, Yumi |
|
|
Capital
(and largest city) |
Port Vila |
|
Official languages |
Bislama, English, French |
| Demonym |
ni-Vanuatu |
| Government |
Parliamentary republic |
| Independence |
from France and the UK |
| - |
Date |
30 July 1980 |
| Area |
| - |
Total |
12,189 km² (161st)
4,706 sq mi |
| - |
Water (%) |
negligible |
| Population |
| - |
July 2008 estimate |
215,446 (173rd) |
| - |
Density |
17/km² (188th)
44/sq mi |
| GDP (PPP) |
2005 estimate |
| - |
Total |
$726 million (175th) |
| - |
Per capita |
$1,576 (121st) |
| HDI (2004) |
?
0.674 (medium)
(120th) |
|
Currency |
Vanuatu vatu ( VUV) |
| Time zone |
(UTC+11) |
| Internet TLD |
.vu |
| Calling code |
+678 |
Europeans
In 1606 a Spanish expedition led by Portuguese
explorers Luis Váez de Torres and Pedro Fernandes
de Queirós became the first from Europe to reach
the islands which they believed to be part of
Terra Australis.
Europeans began settling the islands in the
late 18th century after the British explorer
James Cook visited the islands on his second
voyage and gave them the
name New Hebrides.
In 1887 the islands came under the administration
of a joint French-British naval commission.
For a few months in 1889, the settlement of
Port Vila was an independent republic
known as Franceville.
It was the first self-governing nation to practice
universal suffrage without distinction of sex or
race, although only whites were permitted
to hold office.
In 1906 the French and British agreed to an
Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides.
Vanuatu suffered from the practice of
blackbirding wherein half of the adult male
population of some of the islands became
indentured workers in Australia.
Due to diseases introduced by the new European
populations, the native population fell
to a mere 45,000 in 1935.
During World War II the islands of Efate and
Espiritu Santo were used as allied
military bases.
In the 1960s the ni-Vanuatu people started
to press for self-governance and,
later, independence.
Full sovereignty was finally granted by both
European nations on July 30, 1980 and Vanuatu
became a republic with the Commonwealth
of Nations.
Subsequently, Vanuatu joined the United Nations
in 1981 and the Non-Aligned Movement in 1983.
During the 1990s Vanuatu experienced political
instability which eventually resulted in a
more decentralised government.
The Vanuatu Mobile Force, a paramilitary group,
attempted a coup in 1996 because of a pay dispute.
There were allegations of corruption in the
government of Maxime Carlot Korman.
New elections have been called for, several
times since 1997, most recently in 2004.
Most of the islands are mountainous, of
volcanic origin and have a tropical or
sub-tropical climate.
The nation's largest towns are the capital
Port Vila, situated on Efate, and Luganville
on Espiritu Santo.
The highest point in Vanuatu is Mount
Tabwemasana, at 1879 m (6158 ft), on the
island of Espiritu Santo.
There are several active volcanoes in
Vanuatu, including Lopevi, as well as
several underwater ones.
Volcanic activity is common with an
ever-present danger of a major eruption,
the last occurred in 1945.
Rainfall averages about 2,360 millimetres
(93 in) per year but can be as high as 4,000 mm
(157 in) in the northern islands.
Vanuatu is recognised as a distinct terrestrial
ecoregion, known as the Vanuatu rain forests.
It is part of the Australasia ecozone, which
includes New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands,
Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand.
The ninth season of the reality TV series
Survivor was filmed on Vanuatu, entitled
Survivor: Vanuatu-Islands of Fire.
Two years later, Australia's Celebrity
Survivor was filmed at the same
location used by the U.S. version.
Demographics
Vanuatu has a population of 221,506.
Most is rural, though Port Vila and Luganville
have populations in the tens of thousands.
The inhabitants of Vanuatu, or Ni-Vanuatu, are
in the majority (98.5%) of Melanesian descent,
with the remainder made up of a mix of Europeans,
Asians and other Pacific islanders.
Three islands were historically colonised
by Polynesians.
About 2,000 Ni-Vanuatu live and work in
New Caledonia.
In 2006 the New Economics Foundation and Friends
of the Earth environmentalist group rated Vanuatu
as the happiest place to live out of 178 nations
all over the world using the
Happy Planet Index.
Culture
Vanuatu culture retains a strong diversity
through local regional variations and
through foreign influence.
Vanuatu may be divided into three major
cultural regions.
In the north, wealth is established by
how much one can give away.
Pigs, particularly those with rounded tusks,
are considered a symbol of wealth
throughout Vanuatu.
In the centre, more traditional Melanesian
cultural systems dominate.
In the south, a system involving grants
of title with associated privileges
has developed.
Young men undergo various coming-of-age ceremonies
and rituals to initiate them into manhood,
usually including circumcision.
Languages
There are three official languages: English,
French, and Bislama.
Bislama is a pidgin language, and now a
creole in urban areas, which essentially
combines a typically Melanesian grammar
with a mostly English vocabulary.
It is the only language that can be
understood and spoken by the majority
of Vanuatu's population as a second language.
In addition 113 indigenous languages are
still actively spoken in Vanuatu.
The density of languages, per capita,
is the highest of any nation in the world
with an average of only 2000 speakers
per language.
All of these vernacular languages belong
to the Oceanic branch of the
Austronesian family.
Religion
Christianity is the predominant religion in
Vanuatu, consisting of several denominations.
The Church, adhered to by about
one third of the population, is the largest of them.
Roman Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian are the
common denominations.
Others are the Seventh-day Adventist Church,
the Church of Christ,
Neil Thomas Ministries (NTM),
as well as many other religious
sects and denominations.
Because of the modernities that the military
in World War II brought with them when they
came to the islands, several
cargo cults developed.
Many died out, but the
John Frum cult on
Tanna Island
is still large, and has adherents
in the parliament.
Also on Tanna is the Prince Philip Movement,
which reveres the United Kingdom's Prince Philip.
Villagers of the Yaohnanen tribe believed in an
ancient story about the pale-skinned son of a
mountain spirit venturing across the seas to
look for a powerful woman to marry.
Prince Philip, having visited the island with
his new wife Queen Elizabeth, fitted the
description exactly and is therefore revered
and even held as a god around the isle of Tanna.
Islam in Vanuatu is made up of about 200
converts and growing fast.
It was introduced by Hussein Nabanga who
converted to Islam while training to be
a Christian missionary.
Music
Traditional music (known in Bislama as
kastom singsing or kastom tanis) is
still thriving in the rural areas of Vanuatu.
Musical instruments consist mostly of idiophones:
drums of various shape and size, slit gongs, as
well as rattles, among others.
In various regions, aerophones, such as whistles
or bamboo flutes, are or used to be played;
membranophones and chordophones were also
found in some areas, but have fallen into
disuse during colonial times.
The large slit gongs which symbolize Vanuatu
belong to these traditional instruments; they
were most often used as musical drums to
accompany certain dances, but also sometimes
- though seldom - as a ritual means of
communication; although widespread throughout
Vanuatu, they are used vertically only in
central areas of the archipelago (mainly on Ambrym).
Traditional music is actually a very general cover
term encompassing a wide and complex variety of
musical genres known by every local community -
in a way very similar to the vague term classical
music of Western societies.
Another musical genre that has become widely popular
during the 20th century in all areas of Vanuatu,
is known as string band music.
It combines guitars, ukulele, and popular songs.
More recently the music of Vanuatu, as an industry,
grew rapidly in the 1990s and several bands have
forged a distinctive ni-Vanuatu identity.
Popular genres of modern commercial music, which
are currently being played in town include zouk
music and reggaeton.
Reggaeton, a variation of hip-hop rapped in Spanish,
played alongside its own distinctive beat,
is especially played in the local nightclubs of
Vanuatu with, mostly, an audience of
Westerners and tourists.
For more information about
Vanuatu see Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This page was retrieved and condensed from
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanuatu)
see Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, May 2008.
All text is available under the terms of the
GNU Free Documentation License
(see
Copyrights for details).
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
This information was correct in May 2008. E. & O.E.
Other pages in my Vanuatu series
Bauerfield International (Port Vila) Airport
Bislama - Vanuatu Pidgin English
Cargo Cult - Tanna (island)
Éfaté - A
Éfaté - B
Port Vila - A
Port Vila - B
Port Vila Catholic Cathedral
Port Vila - Buses
Port Vila - (Our) accommodation
Tanna (island)
Vanuatu - Hand Crafts
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