Major expenditure from these sources is on education, for which both the British and French Administrations have set up Teacher Training Colleges, a new British Co-educational Secondary School and French Lycée, and a number of primary schools. Both administrations also assist the voluntary agencies with improvement of their primary schools. A new hospital has recently been built with C.D. & W. funds on Tanna, and consideration is now being given by both national administrations to the replacement of their outdated hospitals at Vila. The main forms of taxation are import duties (16 per cent ad valorem f.o.b. with certain exceptions), export duties of from 2 per cent to 10 per cent on copra, cocoa, coffee, shell, etc., and trading licences. There is no income tax. Condominium revenue and expenditure (excluding revenue and expenditure) of the British and French National Services) is shown below: The main sources of revenue are import and export duties estimated at over £750,000 in 1969. Primary education is not free but only nominal fees are charged. Primary schooling is available for almost all children. Exceptions are the relatively few populated inland areas where changes in patterns of living are taking place for the first time and a desire for education is only now springing up. Secondary education is available at the British Government Secondary School and the French Lycée at Vila. To a limited degree secondary education is available in three French Mission Schools in the main centres. No statistics on literacy are available but it is fairly widespread amongst persons under 35-40 years. Above 40 years it is often limited to pastors, elders and teachers. Only a small proportion of the population is reasonably literate in English or French. Many New Hebrideans are literate in their own vernacular, although there is practically no secular reading matter in the many vernaculars. New Hebrideans who speak English or French usually also speak Pidgin, though the reverse does not follow. HISTORY AND CONSTITUTION The New Hebrides were discovered by the Spanish explorer, de Quiros, in 1606. He was followed by the French navigator, de Bougainville, in 1768, and in 1774 Captain Cook visited and charted the greater part of the chain of islands which comprise the group. Other early visitors were La Perouse who is believed to have passed through in 1788, and d'Entrecasteaux who came in search of La Perouse in 1793. In this same year the sighting of the Banks Islands was recorded by Captain Bligh in the course of his open-boat voyage to Timor after the mutiny on the Bounty. Last century, before any government showed any interest in the New Hebrides, a number of British and French missionaries, planters and traders had established themselves and in 1887, by the AngloFrench Convention of 16th November, the two nations appointed a Joint Naval Commission charged with the protection in the New Hebrides of the lives and properties of the subjects of England and France. In 1902 Deputy Resident Commissioners were appointed and took up residence in the territory. In February 1906 an Anglo-French conference took place in London. A draft convention was prepared to provide for settlement of land claims and for an arrangement to end the difficulties arising from the absence of jurisdiction over the natives. This was confirmed on 20th October 1906, and an Anglo-French Condominium was established. A Protocol drawn up in London in 1914 to replace the Convention of 1906 was ratified in 1922. The system of administration is such that the police consists of a British and a French division, education services are national, medical services are joint in the preventive field but national at the hospital level, while the remaining services (agriculture, customs, treasury, pre-audit, personnel, posts and telephones, radio, meteorology, mines, lands registry, survey, local and urban administration, and public works) are joint. The legal system is that Condominium laws apply to all, but in addition national law applies to non-New Hebrideans where no Condominium law exists. Each non-New Hebridean who is not a British subject or a French citizen has to opt to be subject to either the British or the French system of law and courts in the event of prosecution for an offence not provided for under Condominium law. An Advisory Council was established by Joint Regulation in 1957. It now comprises four official members and 24 private members of whom 10 are nominated by the Resident Commissioners and 14 are elected. Of the nominated members 3 are British, 3 French and 4 New Hebridean; and of the elected members the 3 British and the 3 French members are elected by indirect elections through the electoral machinery of the Chamber of Commerce and the 8 New Hebrideans through electoral colleges. The Council is presided over jointly by the Resident Commissioners. LAND POLICY As the New Hebrides is not a territorial possession of either power concerned, there are no Crown lands or their equivalent. The whole of the land area of the Group is held to belong, or to have belonged until alienated, to the natives. The Protocol regulates the acquisition of unregistered land from natives and the registration of land claims. It provides for the creation of inalienable native reserves and for the control of sales of land by natives to non-natives. On the islands of Santo, Malekula, Efate and Epi substantial areas have been alienated. On the other islands little alienation has occurred. BRITISH NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION Senior Geologist: Dr D. Mallick Marine Superintendent: Capt. R. Bibby FRENCH NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION JOINT SERVICES Chief Agricultural Officer: B. Thévenin Chief Medical Officer: Médecin-Col. Chassary Superintendent of Public Works: P. Debant JUDICIARY Justice of the High Court and British Judge of Joint Court: J. P. Trainor ATTENBOROUGH, D. Quest in Paradise. London, Lutterworth Press, 1960. LARSEN, May and LARSEN, H. Black Sand; New Hebrides, its peoples and places. London, Oliver and Boyd, 1961. LUKE, Sir H. From a South Seas Diary. London, Nicholson and Watson, 1946. SCARR, Deryck. Fragments of Empire: A History of the Western Pacific SIMPSON, Colin. Islands of Men. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1956. THE GILBERT AND ELLICE ISLANDS The Gilbert and Ellice Islands, which also include Ocean Island and the Phoenix and Northern Line Islands, are situated in the South-West Pacific around the point where the International Date Line cuts the Equator. Although the total land area is only 369 square miles it is scattered over more than two million square miles of ocean, and distances between extreme points are enormous. Christmas Island in the east is 2,000 miles from Ocean Island in the west, and the latitude of Washington Island in the north is more than 1,000 miles from the latitude of Niulakita in the south. Furthermore, the islands are remote from large centres of civilisation, and Tarawa, the capital, is about 2,500 miles from Sydney and 1,365 miles from Suva. The scattered nature of the territory and its remoteness cause many difficulties in administration, transport and communications. The Gilbert and Ellice Islands are atolls composed of coral reefs built on the outer arc of the ridges formed by pressure from the central Pacific against the ancient core of Australia. In most of the atolls the reef encloses a lagoon, on the eastern side of which are long narrow stretches of land varying in length from a few hundred yards to some ten miles, and in width from one or two hundred yards to nearly a mile. The surface of these islands seldom rises more than twelve feet above sea level. The climate of the central Gilberts, the Phoenix Islands and Ocean Island is of the maritime equatorial type, but that of the islands farther north and south is of tropical type. The mean annual temperature is 27°C (80°F). The trade winds blow throughout the year with a strong easterly component and exercise a moderating influence on the temperature. From October to March there are occasional westerly gales. Rain comes in sharp squalls and is very irregular, giving wide variations in total fall from island to island and year to year. The average is 40 inches a year near the Equator, rising to 120 inches in the extreme north and south. A census of the population of the islands was held in December 1968. The total population enumerated was 53,517 and comprised 26,404 males and 27,113 females. The territory lies midway between Polynesia and Micronesia, the people of the Gilbert Islands being Micronesian stock, whilst the people of the Ellice Islands are Polynesians with close connections with Samoa and the Tokelaus to the south and east. The racial groups indicated by the 1968 census were as follows: Micronesians (almost entirely Gilbertese) 44,897; Polynesians (almost entirely Ellice Islanders) 7,465; Europeans 458; Chinese (employed at Ocean Island) 65; Mixed race 566; other races 66. The land area of the 25 permanently inhabited islands is very small, and although no accurate surveys have been made, it has been estimated that there is an area of 100 square miles in the Gilbert Islands and 12 square miles in the Ellice Islands. With a population estimated to be increasing at a rate to double itself in about 30 years, despite a family-planning campaign, it is not surprising that population pressure is acute. In 1968 the density of population was nearly 0-3 persons per acre. The people of the territory maintain a reasonable standard of living only by intensive exploitation of the sea and the very limited resources of their infertile atolls, and by sending their young men out to work. A small number find employment on the copra plantations in the Line Islands (Washington, Fanning and Christmas), but the main outlet at present is to the phosphate industry on Ocean Island and Nauru which take approximately 600 and 800 workers respectively, many of them accompanied by their families. There is, already, a surplus of labour available for employment but a critical situation will arise in the late 1970s, when the phosphate which is mined on Ocean Island will be exhausted at the present rate of extraction and the population may well be approaching 68,000 with a density of over 600 to the square mile. The main languages spoken are Gilbertese, Ellice and English. The official language is English, but on the outer islands away from the headquarters at Tarawa it is seldom used. Most of the teaching at primary level is done in the vernaculars but in the secondary schools the language of instruction is English. Practically the entire population is Christian, but whereas the religion of the Ellice Islands is predominantly Protestant, that of the Gilbert Islands is evenly divided between Protestant and Roman Catholic. The Medical Department has its headquarters at Bikenibeu, Tarawa, where the Central Hospital (126 beds) is also situated. Another General Hospital (60 beds) is operated at Ocean Island by the British Phosphate Commissioners for their employees. There is a cottage hospital with 16 beds at Funafuti in the Ellice Islands and a small hospital/dispensary with an assistant medical officer or a male dresser in charge on all other islands. The principal endemic diseases are infantile diarrhoea, chicken pox, amoebiasis, bacillary dysentery, filariasis (mostly in the Ellice group), tuberculosis and leprosy. Tuberculosis remains one of the most serious public health problems. Medical expenditure in 1968, excluding Colonial Development and Welfare Schemes, amounted to an estimated $A267,230. The thirty-seven islands of the territory are divided into four districts which are (with their headquarters islands in brackets): Ocean Island, Gilbert (Tarawa), Ellice (Funafuti), and Line Islands (Christmas). The Phoenix group is uninhabited. Tarawa is the capital. The main Government Stations are on three separate islets on South Tarawa-Betio (population 4,591, Bairiki (1,300), and Bikenibeu (2,438). Bairiki and Bikenibeu are connected by causeways, but Betio, the port area and scene of the bitter struggle between the United States Marines and the Japanese in 1943, lies two miles west of Bairiki and is served by hourly launches. The headquarters of Government are on Bairiki Islet, where are to be |