French PolynesiaPolynésie française

Polynesian voyagers reached the Society Islands and the Marquesas roughly a thousand years ago, sailing east from Samoa and Tonga in double-hulled canoes. From this central zone they went on to settle Hawai'i, Rapa Nui and Aotearoa, which is why Raiatea, known in legend as Havai'i, is remembered across the Pacific as a homeland. Chiefly lineages, priests and a web of marae temples organised society, and wars between districts were frequent.

Europeans arrived in a rush after 1767: Samuel Wallis, then Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, whose account of Tahiti as a new Cythera fed French salon ideas about natural innocence, and James Cook, who observed the Transit of Venus from Point Venus in 1769. The Bounty came for breadfruit in 1788, and some of its mutineers later settled on Tahiti. Diseases brought by ships killed a large share of the population within a few decades.

The London Missionary Society landed in 1797 and allied with the Pōmare family, which used muskets and missionary backing to unify Tahiti. Pōmare II converted in 1812, and Protestant Christianity spread quickly. Rivalry between British Protestants and French Catholic missionaries gave France its pretext: in 1842 Admiral Dupetit-Thouars imposed a protectorate, Queen Pōmare IV resisted in a guerrilla war until 1847, and in 1880 her son Pōmare V ceded the kingdom to France.

The islands became the Établissements français de l'Océanie, a quiet colony of copra, vanilla and pearl shell, known in Europe mainly through Pierre Loti and Paul Gauguin. Tahitian volunteers fought for Free France in the Second World War. In 1946 the islands became an overseas territory, and in the 1950s the nationalist Pouvanaa a Oopa was jailed and exiled after campaigning for independence.

The nuclear era, from 1963, transformed the economy with French money and jobs, and is covered in its own chapter. Autonomy statutes followed in 1977, 1984, 1996 and 2004, when French Polynesia became an 'overseas country' with its own president and assembly. Politics since has swung between Gaston Flosse's pro-French party and Oscar Temaru's pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira; in 2023 Tavini's Moetai Brotherson became president.

The first Polynesians found islands scattered across millions of square kilometres without instruments. Navigators memorised the rising and setting points of stars, read the direction and interference of swells, watched for land birds at dusk and the green tint of lagoons reflected on clouds. Knowledge passed through families and chant, and the voyaging canoe (va'a) was the means of survival.

The Tahitian priest-navigator Tupaia sailed with Cook in 1769 and drew a map of some 70 islands from memory, the first chart of the Pacific made by a Pacific islander for Europeans. Later European scholars doubted that Polynesians could have sailed deliberately against the winds, until the Hōkūle'a canoe sailed from Hawai'i to Tahiti in 1976 guided by traditional methods and was greeted by thousands in Papeete.

Today va'a outrigger racing is the national sport. Clubs train at dawn in every lagoon, and the Hawaiki Nui Va'a race each November crosses open sea between Huahine, Raiatea, Taha'a and Bora Bora over three days. Voyaging canoes are again built in Tahiti and sailed between archipelagos.

The ocean also means the reef economy. Black pearls, grown in the Pinctada margaritifera oyster in Tuamotu and Gambier lagoons since the 1960s, became the leading export. Tuna longliners work the huge exclusive economic zone, and in 2025 the government announced a large marine protected area over much of it (check the final rules).

A marae is a sacred open space paved with stone, with an ahu platform at one end where gods and ancestors were honoured and chiefs were invested. Each family and district had its own, and the largest served whole island groups. Oro, god of war, rose to prominence in the Leeward Islands in the centuries before contact, spread by the arioi, a society of travelling performers and priests.

Taputapuātea on Raiatea was the most important of all. Chiefs from far islands came to its ceremonies, and stones from it were carried to found new marae elsewhere, binding a network across eastern Polynesia. It was listed by UNESCO in 2017 together with its lagoon and the pass through which voyaging canoes arrived.

Christianity replaced the old religion quickly after 1815, and marae fell into ruin or were deliberately destroyed. Today the Mā'ohi Protestant Church, heir to the missionaries, and the Catholic Church are the two largest, with Mormon, Adventist and Sanito churches strong on some islands. Sunday hymn singing (hīmene) in Tahitian, with layered voices, is one of the most moving things a visitor can hear.

Since the 1980s, marae ceremonies have been revived for events such as Matari'i i ni'a, the rise of the Pleiades in November that opens the season of abundance. Visitors should treat any marae as sacred ground: no climbing, no sitting on the platform and no stones taken.

When Algeria became independent, France moved its nuclear testing to the Tuamotu atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa. The Centre d'expérimentation du Pacifique was set up in 1963, and between 1966 and 1996 France carried out 193 tests: 46 in the atmosphere until 1974, then underground in shafts drilled beneath the atolls.

The tests brought an economic boom. Thousands of soldiers, engineers and Polynesian workers arrived, Faa'a airport was built, and Papeete grew fast as people left outer islands for wage jobs. They also spread fallout: later declassified documents showed that some atmospheric tests contaminated inhabited islands, including Tahiti in 1974, far beyond what was admitted at the time.

Opposition grew with Greenpeace protests, the 1985 sinking of the Rainbow Warrior by French agents in Auckland, and the independence movement. When President Chirac resumed testing in 1995 after a moratorium, riots broke out in Papeete and the airport was set on fire. Testing ended in January 1996.

Compensation has been slow. A 2010 law recognises certain cancers among people exposed, but few claims were accepted at first. In 2021 President Macron spoke of a debt France owes the islands. Veterans' groups and the association Moruroa e Tatou keep the issue alive, and a memorial centre has been planned in Papeete (check progress).

Missionaries banned dancing, tattooing and many songs in the early 19th century. The Heiva, a festival held each July since 1881 under the name of Bastille Day celebrations, kept dance alive in a tolerated form. Today Heiva i Tahiti is a serious competition, with troupes of up to a hundred dancers rehearsing for months for 'ori Tahiti performances with drums and choirs at To'ata square in Papeete.

'Ori Tahiti uses fast hip movements for women and scissor-knee steps for men, while the hands tell the story. It is taught in schools and has spread to Japan, Mexico and the United States, where dance schools compete in their own Heiva events.

Tattoo, tatau, the word that gave English its 'tattoo', was nearly lost after the missionary bans. Marquesan artists revived it from old drawings and museum carvings from the 1980s, and today it is everywhere: on the arms and legs of rugby players, dancers and grandparents. Designs carry family and island meanings, and artists ask about your life before they draw.

Paul Gauguin painted in Tahiti in the 1890s and died on Hiva Oa in 1903; his paintings made the image of the islands for Europe, and are now debated for the way they portray young Polynesian women. The Belgian singer Jacques Brel also spent his last years on Hiva Oa and is buried near Gauguin in Atuona.

France pays for schools, police, courts, defence and much of the health system; its transfers are worth about a quarter of the local economy. Civil servants from France receive allowances that raise salaries far above local ones, and the cost of living is high for everyone. Import taxes fund the local budget, which is why a car or a bottle of wine costs so much.

Most people live on Tahiti, many in the urban belt from Faa'a to Papeete and Pirae. Outer islands have lost population to the capital, but the pension (family guesthouse) movement has given some atolls and valleys a tourism income that stays local.

Independence is a live political question. The Tavini government wants a UN-supervised self-determination process, while Paris and pro-French parties argue that the islands could not afford to leave. Unlike New Caledonia, there has been no referendum, and the debate is peaceful.

Climate change threatens the low atolls through sea-level rise and coral bleaching, while tourism, at about 250,000–300,000 visitors a year (check), is capped by flights and beds. The government aims to grow it without building on every motu.