The Gilbert and Ellice Islands was a British territory in the southern Pacific Ocean from 1892 to 1976, comprising the present-day independent countries of Kiribati and Tuvalu. The Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands (the colonial name of Tuvalu) were made British protectorates in 1892 and placed under the jurisdiction of the Western Pacific High Commission. They were administered through a resident commissioner, who based on Tarawa until 1908 and then moved to Ocean Island (Banaba) as the phosphate mining industry on Ocean Island became of economic importance. In 1916, the protectorate was made a Crown colony as the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (GEIC). Portions of the outlying Line Islands and Phoenix Islands were also added the colony. The Japanese invaded and occupied most of the Gilbert Islands during World War II. British administration resumed after the war's end, with moves towards self-determination beginning in the 1950s. A new constitution was adopted in 1967 allowing for the first general elections and self-government was granted in 1972. The final decades of the colony's existence were marked by tension between the majority Gilbertese and the minority Tuvaluan populations, who spoke different languages and were of Micronesian and Polynesian origin respectively. In 1974, the Ellice Islands voted in favour of separation and the GEIC was split into separate colonies with effect from 1976. Tuvalu and Kiribati achieved full independence in 1978 and 1979, respectively.
Location
The Gilbert Islands sometimes also known as Kingsmill Islands or King's-Mill Islands are a chain of sixteen atolls and coral islands in the western Pacific Ocean. They are part of Remote Oceania, and traditionally part of the Micronesia subregion of Oceania. The Gilbert Islands are the main part of what is now the Republic of Kiribati ("Kiribati" is the Gilbertese rendition of "Gilberts") The atolls of the Gilbert Islands are arranged in an approximate north-to-south line. Geographically, the Equator is the dividing line between the northern Gilbert Islands and the southern Gilbert Islands. South of the Gilbert Islands lie the Ellice Islands (now called Tuvalu), which were previously politically connected as part of the GEIC. The Ellice Islands comprise three reef islands and six true atolls, spread out between the latitude of 5° to 10° south and longitude of 176° to 180°, west of the International Date Line. The Ellice Islands are midway between Hawaii and Australia, and they, too, lie in the Polynesia subregion of Oceania.
European discovery and naming In 1568, when Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira was commissioned to explore the South Pacific, he sailed relatively close to the Gilbert Islands. He sailed between the Line Islands and the Phoenix Islands, but without sighting land. The first recorded sighting by Europeans of an Ellice Island was on 16 January 1568, when Álvaro de Mendaña 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. In 1606, Pedro Fernandes de Queirós sighted two of the islands in the Gilbert island group: Butaritari and Makin, which he named the Buen Viaje Islands ('good trip' islands in Spanish). Commodore John Byron passed through the Ellice islands in 1765, during his circumnavigation of the globe on Dolphin (1751) in company with HMS Tamar (1758). He charted the atolls as Lagoon Islands. Commodore Byron visited Nikunau on 2 July 1765, and the island was referred to on European maps for a while as Byron's Island in his honour and I-Nikunau going away to work as whaling ships' crew were sometimes given the surname, Byron). Nanumea was sighted by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la Rúa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 with frigate La Princesa, when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as San Augustin. In 1788, Thomas Gilbert, a British captain, encountered the archipelago while commanding one of two ships of the First Fleet that were looking for an outer passage route from Port Jackson to Canton. In 1820, a Russian admiral, Johann von Krusenstern, named the group "îles Gilbert" (French for Gilbert Islands) in honor of Captain Gilbert's earlier voyage. Around that time, the French captain Louis Duperrey became the first to map the whole Gilbert Islands archipelago. He commanded La Coquille, circumnavigating the globe between 1822 and 1825. 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. Captain Arent de Peyster sighted the rest of the Ellice island group in 1819, while sailing the ship Rebecca. He named Funafuti atoll "Ellice's Island", after Edward Ellice, a British politician and merchant who owned the ship's cargo. After the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay was published, the name Ellice was applied to all nine islands in the Ellice Island group, which is now called Tuvalu.
Two ships of the United States Exploring Expedition, USS Peacock (1828) and USS Flying Fish (1838), under the command of Captain Hudson, surveyed the Gilbert Islands of Tabiteuea, Nonouti, Aranuka, Maiana, Abemama, Kuria, Tarawa, Marakei, Butaritari, and Makin (then called the Kingsmill Islands or Kingsmill Group in English). While in the Gilberts, they devoted considerable time to mapping and charting reefs and anchorages. Alfred Thomas Agate made drawings of men of Butaritari and Makin.
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