Vanua Levu - History

History

The Dutch navigator Abel Tasman was the first known European to sight Vanua Levu, in 1643. He was followed by Captain William Bligh in 1789, en route to Timor while escaping from the Mutiny on the Bounty, in which his crew had forced him and those loyal to him off deck and cast them adrift in a lifeboat. Duff skipper James Wilson subsequently explored the area in 1797.

Traders began exploiting sandalwood thickets in the Bua Bay area around 1805, which had been discovered by shipwrecked sailors of the schooner Argo. By 1815, however, the supply had been depleted and apart from the occasional visit from whalers and bêche-de-mer traders, the island received little further attention until 1840, when a young sailor known as Jackson deserted his crew at Somosomo on the nearby island of Taveuni, was adopted by a local Chief, and explored much of eastern and northern Vanua Levu.

Settlers from Australia and New Zealand established coconut plantations in the Savusavu area in the 1860s. Intermarriage with Fijian people produced a mixed-race elite, which also prospered from the sale of copra, of which Savusavu was a major centre, until the Great Depression of the 1930s led to a collapse in the price of copra. In the same period, Indians founded the town of Labasa, now a major sugar-producing centre.

In 2012, the nation of Kiribati began negotiating to buy 5000 acres of the island to house its population, which is expected to need to move as their islands are inundated by rising sea levels.