This Day in History: 1880-07-30
In 1880, Vanuatu Gained Independence from the joint British–French condominium.
Various European explorers had visited the Islands of Vanuatu since the 17th century, but it was Captain James Cook who landed on the islands on the 17th of July 1774 and named them ‘New Hebrides’.
In the mid-1800s, plantation owners in Australia and Fiji began to kidnap thousands of native Vanuatu males, forcing them to work on their sugar and cotton plantations- the practice was known as “blackbirding”.
In 1839, two British missionaries from the London Missionary Society arrived in Erromango Island, and as many of the indigenous population were cannibals, they were killed and eaten. Not perturbed by this missionaries continued to arrive on the islands and began to impose their beliefs on the natives, attempting to stop them from drinking alcohol, dancing, polygamy and practising cannibalism. On the 16th of October 1887, France and Britain established a joint naval commission on the island to protect their citizens who had migrated there.
The number of European settlers grew to 2,000 French and 1,000 English living among the 65,000 native inhabitants of Vanuatu by 1906. In that same year, France and the United Kingdom began the British–French condominium of the island. Each nation would govern its people, but both France and Britain governed the natives. This resulted in considerable confusion on the island, with two governments, two sets of laws, police, health services, currencies, education systems, and prisons. The French inhabitants also drove on the right-hand side of the road while the British drove on the left.
In the 1960’s the native inhabitants of Vanuatu expressed their desire for self-governance, and on the 30th of July 1980, they gained their independence.
