History
In 1821 Nukulaelae was visited by Captain George Barrett in the Nantucket whaler Independence II, which he named the ‘Mitchell’s Group’.
In 1865 a trading captain acting on behalf of the German firm of J.C. Godeffroy & Sohn obtained a 25-year lease to the eastern islet of Niuoku. For many years the islanders and the Germans argued over the lease, including its the terms and the importation of labourers, however the Germans remained until the lease expired in 1890.
The population of Nukulaelae from 1860-1900 is estimated to be 300 people.
The atoll was claimed by the United States under the Guano Islands Act from the 19th century until 1983, when claims to the atoll were ceded to Tuvalu.
Read more about this topic: Nukulaelae
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)