Fiji

Fiji is an island country in Melanesia in the South Pacific, about 2,000 km (1,300 mi) north-northeast of New Zealand. Suva on Viti Levu, the largest island, is the capital, and the 2013 constitution requires laws in English, Fijian and Standard Hindi; many Indo-Fijians speak Fiji Hindi at home.

Austronesian settlers arrived by at least 1000 BC, followed by Melanesians, and yaqona, or kava, was drunk in ceremonial rites. Abel Tasman sighted Vanua Levu in 1643, James Cook landed in the Lau Islands in 1774, and by the 1820s Levuka on Ovalau had become the first European-style town. The warlord Seru Epenisa Cakobau of Bau rose to power in the 1840s and became king of a short-lived Kingdom of Fiji in 1871. Cotton planters arrived in the 1860s.

Britain made Fiji a crown colony in 1874. From 1879 to 1916 tens of thousands of workers came from India to grow sugarcane, and their descendants form a large share of the population. The Union Jack came down in Suva on 9 October 1970, and Fiji became independent the next day. Fiji became a republic in 1987, and Mahendra Chaudhry became the first Indo-Fijian prime minister in 1997. Elections returned in 2014. It is a parliamentary republic with a president as head of state and a prime minister leading the government.

The islands cover about 18,300 km² (7,100 sq mi), spread over more than 330 islands. Tourism around Nadi, the Coral Coast and the Mamanuca Islands is the main earner, alongside sugar from the cane fields near Lautoka, garments, timber, fish and bottled water, and gold is mined at Vatukoula. Coral reefs make scuba diving a common draw. Rugby sevens is the national sport, and the men's sevens team won Fiji's first Olympic medal, a gold, at the 2016 Summer Olympics, beating Great Britain in the final.