Vanuatu

The only country ever governed by two colonial powers simultaneously, under an arrangement so absurd it was known as the Pandemonium. Britain and France, unable to agree who should have the New Hebrides, established a Condominium in 1906 with two separate administrations, two police forces, two currencies, two legal systems, two school systems and two health services, plus a joint court presided over for a time by a Spanish appointee. Ni-Vanuatu were citizens of neither power and had no nationality at all. Before that the islands had been devastated by blackbirding, the labour trade that took tens of thousands to Queensland and Fiji, and by introduced disease that may have cut the population by ninety per cent. Espiritu Santo hosted a vast American base in the Second World War, and the wealth the Americans casually displayed fed the John Frum cargo movement on Tanna, which still holds parades. Independence came on 30 July 1980, immediately complicated by a French-backed secession on Santo that Papua New Guinean troops suppressed. The country has more languages per head than anywhere on earth, over a hundred for a small population, with Bislama as the shared creole. Custom land tenure was restored at independence. Vanuatu ranks among the most disaster-exposed countries measured. Port Vila is the capital, on Efate. The archipelago runs some thirteen hundred kilometres. Pentecost island's land diving, where men jump from towers with vines tied to their ankles, is the origin of bungee jumping. Mount Yasur on Tanna is among the most continuously active volcanoes on earth.

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