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May 31, 2024 · French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France consisting of five archipelagoes in the south-central Pacific Ocean. It includes some 130 islands scattered across part of the Pacific. The capital, Papeete, is on the island of Tahiti.
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Anthropologists and historians believe the Great Polynesian Migration commenced around 1500 BC as Austronesian peoples went on a journey using celestial navigation to find islands in the South Pacific Ocean. The first islands of French Polynesia to be settled were the Marquesas Islands in about 200 BC.
May 31, 2024 · European contact with the islands of French Polynesia was gradual. The Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan sighted Pukapuka Atoll in the Tuamotu group in 1521. The southern Marquesas Islands were reached in 1595.
In 1853 the presence of French missionaries in New Caledonia led to French annexation, possibly for fear of British action and certainly to establish a penal colony (to which convicts were transported until 1897). Other European countries intervened for different reasons.
New Caledonia (/ ˌ k æ l ɪ ˈ d oʊ n i ə / ⓘ KAL-ih-DOH-nee-ə; French: Nouvelle-Calédonie [nuvɛl kaledɔni] ⓘ) is a sui generis collectivity of overseas France in the southwest Pacific Ocean, south of Vanuatu, about 1,210 km (750 mi) east of Australia, and 17,000 km (11,000 mi) from Metropolitan France.
At this time, the French also established colonies in the South Pacific, including New Caledonia, the various island groups which make up French Polynesia (including the Society Islands, the Marquesas, the Gambier Islands, the Austral Islands and the Tuamotus), and established joint control of the New Hebrides with Britain.
Although other nations also participated, it was the British and the French who dominated Pacific exploration in the eighteenth century. Beginning in the mid-1700s, the rival nations began to send out scientific expeditions to explore and chart the islands of the Pacific.
