History · Kiribati

Kiribati: Atolls on the Equator

Thirty-three low islands scattered across an ocean the size of the continental United States — a navigator society, a strip-mined phosphate island, one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific War, and a front line of sea-level rise

By Globeway Editorial · 30 September 2026

A satellite view of a narrow triangular coral atoll enclosing a lagoon in deep blue ocean
Tarawa Atoll from orbit. Kiribati's 33 islands add up to about 810 square kilometres of land spread across 3.5 million square kilometres of the central Pacific. (European Space Agency / Wikimedia Commons · Attribution (free use with credit))

A country that is almost all sea

Kiribati straddles the Equator and the International Date Line in the central Pacific — 32 atolls and reef islands in three widely separated groups, plus the raised island of Banaba. It lies in all four hemispheres, and since it moved the date line east in 1995 it has been the place where each new day on Earth begins. About 130,000 people live there, most of them crowded onto South Tarawa. Its history is one of isolation, of a phosphate island consumed for other countries' farms, and, now, of a low country facing a rising ocean.

A short history

  1. Ancient times

    Settlement

    Austronesian voyagers reach the Gilbert Islands.

  2. 1788

    The Gilberts

    Sighted by British captain Thomas Gilbert, whose name they later take.

  3. 19th century

    Traders and blackbirders

    Whalers, labour recruiters and missionaries arrive.

  4. 1892

    Protectorate

    Britain takes the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.

  5. 1900

    Banaba phosphate

    Discovered, and strip-mined for 80 years.

  6. 1943

    The Battle of Tarawa

    One of the Pacific War's bloodiest assaults for its size.

  7. 1957–1962

    Nuclear tests

    Britain and the US test bombs at Kiritimati.

  8. 1979

    Independence

    Kiribati becomes a republic as phosphate runs out.

The navigator islands

Austronesian voyagers settled the Gilbert Islands sometime between about 3000 BCE and 1300 CE, with later Polynesian influence and Fijian invasions shaping the I-Kiribati people. It was a society of skilled navigators and canoe-builders and fearsome warriors, with no overarching state — each island largely governed itself through its council and its maneaba, the great meeting house at the centre of community life.

A very large open-sided thatched meeting house with a steep pitched roof on a coral island
A maneaba on Arorae. The meeting house remains the centre of I-Kiribati political and social life, island by island. (Rafael Ávila Coya / Wikimedia Commons)

Whalers came in the 19th century, along with labour recruiters — including Peruvian slave raiders who reached the Gilberts in 1862–63 — traders in coconut oil and copra, and missionaries who converted the islands almost completely. Britain declared a protectorate over the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in 1892, partly to control the labour trade.

Banaba

In 1900 phosphate rock — fossilised seabird guano — was found on Banaba. For 80 years, a British-Australian-New Zealand mining body strip-mined the island to supply cheap fertiliser to Australian and New Zealand farms, destroying about 90 per cent of its surface.

A colonial-era office building with verandas on Ocean Island around 1920
Mining company offices on Banaba (Ocean Island), around 1920. Most Banabans were resettled to Rabi Island in Fiji in 1945, where their descendants still live. (Wikimedia Commons)

In the 1970s the Banabans sued the British Crown in London over the mining royalties, but in 1977 the court held that the Crown owed them no fiduciary duty.

War, and bombs

Japan occupied the Gilberts in 1941. In November 1943, US Marines took the tiny island of Betio on Tarawa in 76 hours of fighting that killed around 1,000 Americans and 4,700 Japanese and Korean defenders — a shock to the American public and a hard lesson in amphibious assault.

US Marines advancing among wreckage and palm stumps on Betio island, 1943
US Marines on Betio, Tarawa, November 1943. Kiritimati (Christmas Island), in Kiribati's eastern group, was later used by Britain and the United States for atmospheric nuclear tests. (U.S. Marine Corps; colorized by Cassowary Colorizations / Wikimedia Commons)

Independence, and the rising sea

The Polynesian Ellice Islanders voted to separate in 1974, becoming Tuvalu. The Gilberts became independent as Kiribati on 12 July 1979 — the same year the phosphate ran out, taking most of the country's export earnings with it. A sovereign wealth fund built from phosphate royalties has been the financial mainstay ever since, alongside fishing-licence fees from foreign tuna fleets and remittances from I-Kiribati seafarers.

A seawall of rocks and sandbags protecting low houses and palms on a narrow Kiribati shore
Coastal defences on Tarawa. Most of Kiribati's land is only one or two metres above sea level, and rising seas, king tides and saltwater intrusion are already damaging villages and crops. (Erin Magee / DFAT / Wikimedia Commons)

A former president, Anote Tong, made Kiribati a leading voice on climate change and bought land in Fiji as a food-security hedge and possible refuge. His successor switched recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019.

What Kiribati carries

Kiribati's history is a small, remote society repeatedly acted upon from outside — raided for labour, mined for phosphate, fought over in 1943, tested on in the 1950s. Independence came with the loss of the one resource the colonial economy had run on. Now the country faces a threat it did nothing to cause: an ocean that, on land this low, leaves very little margin.

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