New Hebrides
New Hebrides, officially the New Hebrides Condominium (French: Condominium des Nouvelles-Hébrides, lit. "Condominium of the New Hebrides") and named after the Hebrides Scottish archipelago, was the colonial name for the island group in the South Pacific Ocean that is now Vanuatu. Native people had inhabited the islands for three thousand years before the first Europeans arrived in 1606 from a Spanish expedition led by Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós. The islands were named by Captain James Cook in 1774 and subsequently colonised by both the British and the French.
New Hebrides Condominium Condominium des Nouvelles-Hébrides | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1906–1980 | |||||||||
| Capital | Port Vila | ||||||||
| Common languages | English, French, Bislama | ||||||||
| Government | |||||||||
| Resident Commisoner | |||||||||
| Legislature | Representative Assembly (1975-1980) | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Established | 20 October 1906 | ||||||||
| 30 July 1980 | |||||||||
| Currency | New Hebrides franc, Australian dollar | ||||||||
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The two countries eventually signed an agreement making the islands an Anglo-French condominium that provided for joint sovereignty over the archipelago with two parallel administrations, one British, one French. In some respects, that divide continued even after independence, with schools teaching in either one language or the other. The condominium lasted from 1906 until 1980, when New Hebrides gained its independence as the Republic of Vanuatu.