Fiji
The crossroads of the South Pacific
Fiji is an archipelago of more than three hundred islands in the heart of the South Pacific, long a hub of trade, travel, and culture in Melanesia and beyond. Its two largest islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, hold most of the population and rise to rugged volcanic interiors cloaked in rainforest, ringed by coral reefs and palm-fringed beaches that have made the country a byword for tropical idyll. Suva, on Viti Levu, is the capital and the largest city in the South Pacific outside Australia and New Zealand.
The major islands are of volcanic origin, mountainous and green, with Mount Tomanivi on Viti Levu reaching 1,324 meters. Many of the smaller islands are coral atolls and limestone formations scattered across a wide expanse of ocean. The climate is tropical maritime, with a wet windward side and a drier leeward side on the big islands, and the country lies in the path of Pacific cyclones. Extensive coral reefs, including the Great Sea Reef, support rich marine life and a major dive and tourism industry.
Settled by Austronesian and Melanesian peoples thousands of years ago, Fiji became a British colony in 1874, during which large numbers of indentured laborers were brought from India to work sugar plantations. Their descendants form a substantial Indo-Fijian community alongside the Indigenous iTaukei, a division that has shaped politics and prompted several coups since independence in 1970. Today Fiji is a regional diplomatic and economic center, with an economy built on tourism, sugar, and remittances, and a constitution recognizing English, iTaukei, and Fiji Hindi.