A living history

The Early Explorers

Many of the islands of Vanuatu have been inhabited for thousands of years, with the oldest archaeological evidence dating back to 2000 BC. Vanuatu is one of the most culturally diverse countries on earth, with a population of approximately 217,750, 113 distinct languages and innumerable dialects. This amazing diversity is the result of 4,000 years of sporadic immigration from many Pacific countries. Although most settlers arrived from Melanesia, the larger-built, lighter-skinned Polynesians also settled on the islands.

In 1605, the Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernández de Quirós became the first European to reach the islands, believing it to be part of Terra Australis. Europeans began settling the islands in the late 18th century, after British explorer James Cook visited on his second voyage and gave them the name New Hebrides.

In 1887, the islands began to be administered by a French–British naval commission, with the French and British agreeing to an Anglo-French Condominium on the New Hebrides in 1906.

The Missionaries

The first two missionaries set foot in Vanuatu on Erromango in 1839. An inauspicious beginning with the death of one of their most famous members, John Williams of the London Missionary Society, prompted mission societies to proceed cautiously.

For the following nine years, they used converted Polynesian missionaries. Polynesians were regarded as a form of cannon fodder, and if they survived, Europeans could safely follow. In 1845, Samoan teachers landed on Efate, but most had been killed within a few years. The following years saw Catholic, Presbyterian and Anglican missionaries from England, Noumea and France making various short lived or aborted attempts to convert the ni-Vanuatu. Through perseverance, by the 1860s various denominational mission stations existed throughout the islands.

The effect on local populations varied. For those who converted to Christianity, many died from exposure to a range of introduced diseases not only measles and dysentery, but smallpox, influenza, pneumonia, scarlet fever, mumps, whooping cough, and the simple but often deadly common cold. Traditional medicines, combined with a degree of genetic immunity, proved effective against endemic diseases, but had no impact on these new conditions. Some considered this to mean the new religion and its God were impotent in the face of disease; others took the more pragmatic view that as all illness stemmed from sorcery anyway, Christianity must be a particularly malevolent religion to attack its converts so violently. This attitude resulted in the deaths of several missionaries following epidemics.

Still, the missionaries kept coming and eventually had a profound impact on Melanesian society. Catholicism in particular was more readily embraced, as Catholic missionaries took a more permissive view of converts merging elements of their own beliefs with Catholicism a dynamic that would go on to shape how the country was eventually governed.

World War 2

With the fall of France to Germany in World War 2, the French side of the condominium technically became at war with the other half Britain. However, in 1940 the French population of the New Hebrides immediately declared their support for General de Gaulle's Free French Forces, the first of France's Pacific colonies to do so one of the only times during the Condominium that the French and British were not at odds with one another.

In early 1942, the Japanese reached the nearby Solomon Islands and the New Hebrideans lived in fear of being next. The Americans arrived first, entirely unannounced, in May 1942, filling Mele Bay with warships an arrival so sudden that a large number of the Vila population fled into the hills, believing the Japanese had landed.

Being at war, the Americans built an entire infrastructure to support their military presence: barracks and hospitals, a road around the entire island, airstrips and wharves, in a push to counter the Japanese advance. In Espiritu Santo, 100,000 troops arrived in short order, doubling the country's population almost overnight.

Throughout the islands, New Hebrideans were struck by the equality with which Black and white military personnel were treated by the Americans, and those who worked for them received respect and wages far beyond anything experienced before. The early 1940s were, in many ways, calm years for the native New Hebrideans Vanuatu was attacked only once by a Japanese plane (which was shot down), resulting in a single casualty on Santo: Besse the cow. Unlike Japanese-occupied New Guinea or the Solomon Islands, they experienced fair treatment, better living conditions, modern medical aid and a vast expansion of facilities, many of which remain in use today.

End of the War

Three years later, the Americans left as swiftly as they had arrived. As US policy meant the domestic economy couldn't sustain an influx of returning war matériel, the Americans offered to sell the Condominium Government plant equipment, bulldozers, cranes and office equipment for just seven cents on the dollar of its real value. The Condominium, reasoning the Americans would leave it behind regardless, declined so the decision was made to bulldoze it all into the ocean.

This reckless discard contributed to the already growing Cargo Cults throughout the islands, and to resentment of Condominium rule. Divers today can still find much of this discarded war material around Efate, most famously at Million Dollar Point in Espiritu Santo.

Perhaps the most famous wartime remnant, and one of the most famous dive sites in the world, is the SS Coolidge. Christened in 1931, converted into a troop transport in 1941, the 654-foot "President Coolidge" was carrying 5,092 officers and troops toward the Guadalcanal campaign when, on 26 October 1942, it struck a mine while entering the Segond Channel off Espiritu Santo. A second explosion followed moments later. Captain Nelson ran the mortally wounded ship aground and ordered it abandoned; fifty five minutes after beaching, she slid backward into the channel and sank, taking two men down with her.

The loss was a costly mistake in the wider scheme of the war but it turned Espiritu Santo into a mecca for divers worldwide, as the Coolidge remains the largest, most intact and most accessible wreck of World War 2. Lying only a few kilometres from Luganville and just a few paces from shore, it's reachable by boat or on foot through several dive operators based in Santo, with visibility typically around 15–25 metres. Novice divers can safely explore the outer sections; deeper penetration is best approached gradually, after a few dives spent getting to know the wreck from the outside.

Following the war, Condominium authorities were left governing an economy staggering under a hopelessly inadequate dual political system but a spark had been lit that would not go out, and by the 1960s it was ready to ignite.

Father of Independence

For Ni-Vanuatu before Independence, land was held in trust across generations, not owned outright or sold. Europeans took an entirely different view: by the mid-1960s, European settlers claimed ownership of almost 30% of the country's land mass, much of it cleared for coconut and copra production. As copra prices fell and planters looked toward cattle farming, further land clearing sparked protests in Santo and Malekula from villagers objecting to more of their custom land being taken — resentment that had simmered since the end of the war, now sparking the formation of political parties.

French-backed movements such as Jimmy Stevens' Nagriamel claimed to protect Melanesian land rights. In 1971, after Stevens petitioned the United Nations for early independence, the Anglican minister Father Walter Lini formed the Anglophone-backed Vanua'aku Party. As the country became more politicised, sentiment split largely along colonial lines, complicated further by a push for Santo autonomy — setting the stage for the first general election.

In November 1979, Lini's Vanua'aku Party won. Independence was set for mid-1980, but in May of that year an insurrection on Tanna split the island in two, and in Santo, Stevens seized the airport, expelled police from their station, and declared Santo independent under the name Venerama. What the world came to call, not entirely seriously, the "Coconut War" ended when Stevens' son was killed at a Papua New Guinean troop roadblock; Stevens surrendered shortly after.

At midnight in June 1980, the French and British flags were lowered for the last time, and the flag of the Republic of Vanuatu was raised in their place. Most French nationals left the islands, and land ownership reverted to the indigenous Ni-Vanuatu, with new leases set at 60 years.

Chief Roimata — Ancient King of Vanuatu

In July 2008, Chief Roi Mata's Domain was formally registered as Vanuatu's first World Heritage site. Just half an hour's drive north of Port Vila, it features a string of perfect beaches, a breathtaking harbour, and views across to the hat shaped island of Artok.

Oral tradition across the middle and southern islands tells of a great and powerful chief who united the area's warring, cannibalistic tribes into a single peaceful group the first such unification in ancient Vanuatu. Chief Roi Mata, so the story goes, took the title of King, and through sheer personal magnetism brought lasting peace to the region. His life was ended by his own brother, who struck him with a poisoned dart; he died slowly, carried by his grieving family around the island of Efate to farewell those he had unified, before finally passing at Feles Cave on Lelepa Island.

Tradition holds he was carried through the underwater caverns of Tukutuku to nearby Retoka Island, where he was interred and, following custom, close family and companions were interred alongside him, some of them still living at the time of burial.

In 1967, French archaeologist José Garanger set out to determine whether Roi Mata was a historical or purely legendary figure. With the blessing of Lelepa's chiefs, his team located the grave with surprising ease and, over an excavation of roughly 20 by 10 metres, uncovered 47 skeletons matching oral tradition almost exactly. Radiocarbon dating placed the burial between 1250 and 1300 AD, corroborating centuries of oral history passed down by the people of Tongoa.

Retoka Island is no longer under tabu, and its customary owners now offer tours to visitors wishing to see the island and learn the story of Roi Mata's grave firsthand.