History of Tahiti

The formation of the Polynesian Islands

About one million to three million years ago, the lava behind submarine volcanoes formed today's Polynesian Islands. However, human footprints here did not occur until much later. New Zealand and the Polynesian Islands are the last landmasses inhabited by humans on Earth.

Polynesia means "many islands", ranging from Tonga, Cook Islands, Polynesian Islands in the west to the Pitcairn Islands in the southeast. The people in these places have the same language and the same ancestors, such as the native Hawaiians and the Maori people of New Zealand. These ancestors can all be traced back to the Pacific immigrants thousands of years ago.

The Discovery of Tahiti

Around 1520 AD, the Pacific Islands became an adventure target for Europeans. The Portuguese and Spanish successively conducted overseas expeditions under the patronage of the royal family. The work of colonial exploration. In the early seventeenth century, the Dutch also joined the ranks of expeditions to the Pacific Islands.

In 1767, British Captain Samuel Wallis was the first European to discover Tahiti; later French explorer Bougan was conducting the first circumnavigation of the world. Louis Antoine de Bougainville also set foot on Tahiti in April 1768. When he returned to Europe, he described the island as being home to "noble savages" and "Venus-like women" A paradise on earth to live in, thus making Tahiti, a strange place, famous in Europe, and these mythical myths later attracted Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson and Scholars and artists like Paul Gauguin.

Church Kingdom

The first long-term European settlers were members of the New Church in London, who assisted the local Pomare family in controlling the entire island. Pomare II (1803-1824) converted to Christianity, defeated the other chiefs of Tahiti, and established a "church kingdom" with written laws. During the reigns of Pomare III (1824-1827) and Queen Pomare IV (1827-1877), the Tahitians, together with the Church, fought against the spread of disease, prostitution and alcoholism, as well as the spread of European traders and vagabonds. Affected, the authority of the church was challenged.

French Territory

The island is now part of the Windward Islands District within the Overseas Dominion of French Polynesia. In 1758, Tahiti became a French overseas territory. King George III Island. In 1768, Bougainville came to the island and declared that the island belonged to France. The British navigator James Cook visited the island in 1769, and the captain of the British scientific research ship "HMS Bounty" (HMS Bounty) in 1788.