The Mauritsian Republic

Maurits, Officially the Mauritsian Republic, is a island country in Polynesia about 2,500km away from New Zealand and about 2,700km from the Pitcairn Islands. Maurits consist of an archipelago of about 15 islands of which 7 are permanently inhabited amounting to a total of about 1.950 square kilometers. The 2 largest islands are Arleans with about 40% of the population living on it, Orleans with roughly 25% and Avignon with about 23% of the population. The Majority of the islands formed due to volcanic activity with some of this still believed to be active.

Following the Great Polynesian Migration, European explorers visited the islands of Maurits on several occasions. Traders and whaling ships also visited. In 1842, the French and Dutch colonized the islands and established a Franco-Dutch protectorate they called Établissements Franco-néerlandais d'Océanie (EFNO) (Franco-Dutch Establishments).

In 1946, the EFNO was granted more autonomy under the constitution of the French Fourth Republic and Post-war Netherlands, Polynesians living on the island were granted the right to vote through citizenship. Maurits remained a joint Franco-Dutch Protectorate until the 1970's when they gained Independence from France and the Netherlands, around the same time as Fiji and Suriname.

## History

Scientists 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 Maurits to be settled were the Chaletria Islands in about 200 BC. The Polynesians later ventured west and discovered the Leeuwarden Islands around AD 300.

European encounters began in 1521 when Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, sailing at the service of the Spanish Crown, sighted Puka-Puka in the Tuāmotu-Gambier Archipelago. In 1606 another Spanish expedition under Pedro Fernandes de Queirós sailed through Polynesia sighting an inhabited island on 10 February which they called Sagitaria (or Sagittaria), probably the island of Rekareka to the southeast of Tahiti. In 1722, Dutchman Jakob Roggeveen while on an expedition sponsored by the Dutch West India Company, charted the location of six islands in the Tuamotu Archipelago and two islands in the Society Islands, one of which was Bora Bora.

British explorer Samuel Wallis became the first European navigator to visit Tahiti in 1767. French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville also visited Tahiti in 1768, while British explorer James Cook arrived in 1769. Cook would stop in Tahiti again in 1773 during his second voyage to the Pacific, and once more in 1777 during his third and last voyage before being killed in Hawaii.

In 1772, the Spanish Viceroy of Peru Don Manuel de Amat ordered a number of expeditions to Tahiti under the command of Domingo de Bonechea who was the first European to explore all of the main islands beyond Tahiti. A short-lived Spanish settlement was created in 1774, and for a time some maps bore the name *Isla de Amat* after Viceroy Amat. Christian missions began with Spanish priests who stayed in Tahiti for a year. Protestants from the London Missionary Society settled permanently in Polynesia in 1797.

King Pōmare II of Tahiti was forced to flee to Mo'orea in 1803; he and his subjects were converted to Protestantism in 1812. French Catholic missionaries arrived on Tahiti in 1834; their expulsion in 1836 caused France to send a gunboat in 1838. In 1842, Tahiti and Tahuata were declared a French protectorate, to allow Catholic missionaries to work undisturbed. The capital of Papeetē was founded in 1843. In 1880, France annexed Tahiti, changing the status from that of a protectorate to that of a colony. The island groups were not officially united until the establishment of the French protectorate in 1889.

After France declared a protectorate over Tahiti in 1840 and fought a war with Tahiti (1844–1847), the British and French signed the Jarnac Convention in 1847, declaring that the kingdoms of Raiatea, Huahine and Bora Bora were to remain independent from either powers and that no single chief was to be allowed to reign over the entire archipelago. France eventually broke the agreement, and the islands were annexed and became a colony in 1888 (eight years after the Windward Islands) after many native resistances and conflicts called the Leewards War, lasting until 1897.

In the 1880s, France claimed the Tuamotu Archipelago, which formerly belonged to the Pōmare Dynasty, without formally annexing it. Having declared a protectorate over Tahuata in 1842, the French regarded the entire Marquesas Islands as French. In 1885, France appointed a governor and established a general council, thus giving it the proper administration for a colony. The islands of Rimatara and Rūrutu unsuccessfully lobbied for British protection in 1888, so in 1889 they were annexed by France. Postage stamps were first issued in the colony in 1892. The first official name for the colony was *Établissements de l'Océanie* (Establishments in Oceania); in 1903 the general council was changed to an advisory council and the colony's name was changed to *Établissements Français de l'Océanie* (French Establishments in Oceania).

In 1940, the administration of French Polynesia recognised the Free French Forces and many Polynesians served in World War II. Unknown at the time to the French and Polynesians, the Konoe Cabinet in Imperial Japan on 16 September 1940 included French Polynesia among the many territories which were to become Japanese possessions, as part of the "Eastern Pacific Government-General" in the post-war world. However, in the course of the war in the Pacific the Japanese were not able to launch an actual invasion of the French islands.

In 1949, Polynesians were granted French and Dutch citizenship and the islands' status was changed to an Constituent country and split away from French Polynesia; the islands' name was changed in 1957 to Polynesian Maurits. In 1962, France's early nuclear testing ground of Algeria became independent and the Archipelago was selected as the new testing site however, before the tests could start the country gained it's independence from both France and the Netherlands in 1973.