Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands is a Melanesian island country in the southwest Pacific, east of Papua New Guinea and northeast of Australia. Honiara on Guadalcanal, the largest island, is the capital. English is the official language, yet few people speak it fluently: Solomons Pijin, an English-based creole, serves as the common tongue beside about 70 local languages.

People from the Bismarck Islands and New Guinea arrived by about 30,000 BC, followed later by the Lapita people. The Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña, sailing from Peru, landed on Santa Isabel on 7 February 1568, and reports of his voyage linked the islands to the wealth of the biblical King Solomon. From the 1840s labor recruiters, often by force, took islanders to plantations in Australia, Fiji and Samoa, a trade known as blackbirding. Germany claimed the northern islands in 1886, and in June 1893 Captain Herbert Gibson of HMS Curacoa declared the southern Solomons a British protectorate.

Allied forces took Guadalcanal from Japan in 1942 and 1943. Two islanders, Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, found the wrecked crew of John F. Kennedy's PT-109 and paddled a rescue message written on a coconut to the Allies. Independence came on 7 July 1978 with Peter Kenilorea as first prime minister. From 1998 to 2003 fighting between militias from Guadalcanal and Malaita left the government bankrupt by 2001, until an Australian-led mission, RAMSI, arrived in July 2003. In 2019 the government switched its recognition from Taiwan to China. A parliamentary monarchy, it keeps the British monarch as head of state, represented by a governor-general chosen by Parliament.

The islands cover 28,896 km² (11,157 sq mi). Tropical timber has long been the main export, alongside copra, palm oil and cocoa grown on Guadalcanal, Makira and Malaita. Gold mining began at Gold Ridge on Guadalcanal in 1998. Strings of polished shell disks made in the Langa Langa Lagoon of Malaita remain a traditional currency, and traditional music is played by slit-drum and panpipe ensembles.