Vanuatu fishery resource profiles / by Moses John Amos

Vanuatu was first visited by Europeans in the early 17th century. James Cook explored the islands in 1774, giving them the name "New Hebrides", which lasted until independence on 30 July 1980. The first European settler was a cattle rancher who arrived in 1854. He was soon followed by cotton growers from Australia, and later by the French, who outnumbered the British three to one by the mid-1880s.