Vanuatu

Capital: Port Vila · Oceania

Vanuatu (English: VAH-noo-AH-too or van-WAH-too; Bislama and French pronunciation [vanuatu]), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (French: République de Vanuatu; Bislama: Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an archipelagic country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is 1,750 km (1,090 mi) east of northern Australia, 540 km (340 mi) northeast of New Caledonia, east of New Guinea, southeast of Solomon Islands, and west of Fiji. 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 o

Capital

Port Vila

Population

320,000

Area

12,189 km²

Currency

—

Calling code

+678

Languages

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Country fields from Wikidata (CC0); flag via Wikimedia Commons; profile from the CIA World Factbook (public domain); travel guide from Wikivoyage (CC BY-SA); GDP, GDP per capita and life expectancy from World Bank Open Data (CC BY 4.0).