Vanuatu is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago is some 1,750 km east of northern Australia, 500 km north-east of New Caledonia, west of Fiji, and south of the Solomon Islands.
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 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.
