Solomon Islands

An archipelago misnamed for a king's gold, forged by settlement, war and sovereignty

The Solomon Islands, a Melanesian archipelago east of New Guinea, were peopled first by Papuan settlers tens of thousands of years ago and then by Austronesian-speaking Lapita voyagers about 3,000 years ago, producing one of the most linguistically diverse populations on Earth. The Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña reached them in 1568 and named them for the biblical King Solomon in the mistaken belief that he had found the source of that king's gold; centuries of isolation followed. The nineteenth century brought the coercive 'blackbirding' labour trade, Christian missionaries and, in 1893, a British protectorate, before the islands became one of the pivotal battlegrounds of the Pacific War at Guadalcanal in 1942–43. Independent since 7 July 1978, the country has navigated the ethnic conflict known as 'the Tensions', an Australian-led regional intervention, and the great-power attention that followed its 2019 switch of recognition from Taiwan to the People's Republic of China.