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History
Islands located south of Kiribati. Pop. 9000. The state includes
Niu, whose people are Kiribatan.
The people are believed to have migrated from Tonga and Samoa
perhaps about 1325 AD, calculating from language divergence.
But archaeology suggests settlement by 300-500 AD.
Niu was first seen by Spaniards in 1568 and Niulakita in 1595.
A British Captain named them Ellice in 1819. Beachcombers and
castaways settled there in the early 19th century. Whalers arrived
1870. About 1850s Blackbirders from Peru took slaves from Funafuti
and Nukulaelae, removing most of the population for allegedly
contract labor but none ever returned.
Missionaries arrived in 1865. An American company mined phosphate
(Guano) on Niulakita and in 1856 claimed the four southern islands.
In 1892 British formed the Gilbert Islands Protectorate (now
Kiribati) and Tuvalu was joined to it. The Gilbert and Ellice
Islands Colony was proclaimed in 1916. When the Japanese occupied
the Gilberts in 1942 the Americans occupied the Ellice Islands
to regain the Gilberts.
Tuvalu voted to secede from the joint colony in 1974 and became
separately independent in 1978.
The Islands have a treaty with the US which gives the US access
to the bases built during the second world war and the right
to veto the use by any other power of the bases. i.e. its sovereignty
is limited and US power has replaced the British.
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