Vanuatu, officially the Republic of Vanuatu, is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean and part of Melanesia. Vanuatu was first inhabited by Melanesian people.
The first Europeans to visit the islands were a Spanish expedition led by Portuguese navigator Fernandes de Queirós, who arrived on the largest island, Espíritu Santo, in 1606. Queirós claimed the archipelago for Spain, as part of the colonial Spanish East Indies, and named it La Austrialia del Espíritu Santo. In the 1880s, France and the United Kingdom claimed parts of the archipelago, and in 1906, they agreed on a framework for jointly managing the archipelago as the New Hebrides through an Anglo–French condominium.
An independence movement arose in the 1970s, and the Republic of Vanuatu was founded in 1980.
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