Solomon IslandsSolomon Aelan

People reached the northern Solomons around 30,000 years ago, when Bougainville and Buka were close to New Guinea. About 3,000 years ago Austronesian-speaking voyagers associated with Lapita pottery moved through the islands, and later Polynesian settlers returned westwards to settle outliers such as Rennell, Bellona, Tikopia and Ontong Java. The result is an archipelago where Melanesian and Polynesian communities, and dozens of languages, sit side by side.

The Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña arrived in 1568 looking for gold and named the islands after King Solomon's mines, but no colony followed. In the 19th century whalers, traders and missionaries came, and from the 1870s labour recruiters took tens of thousands of islanders to plantations in Queensland and Fiji, often by trickery or force. This trade, known as blackbirding, spread Pijin and brought violence in return, including attacks on ships and missionaries.

Britain declared a protectorate in 1893 and ran it cheaply from Tulagi, a small island in the Florida group. Plantations of coconuts for copra spread along the coasts, a head tax pushed men into wage labour, and churches became the main providers of schools and health care. In 1927 Malaitan leader Basiana killed a district officer, William Bell, in protest at the tax; punitive raids followed, and the memory still matters on Malaita.

The Second World War destroyed Tulagi and made Honiara, which grew out of the US base at Point Cruz, the new capital. After the war the Maasina Rule movement on Malaita demanded self-government and better wages, laying ground for independence, which came peacefully on 7 July 1978.

Tensions between Guadalcanal people and Malaitan settlers erupted into armed conflict from 1998 to 2003, including a coup in 2000. An Australian-led regional mission, RAMSI, restored order from 2003 until 2017. Riots in 2006 and 2021 burned parts of Honiara's Chinatown. In 2019 the government switched recognition from Taiwan to China, and in 2022 signed a security agreement with Beijing, making the country a focus of great-power rivalry in the Pacific.

In mid-1942 Japanese forces occupied Tulagi and began building an airfield on the Guadalcanal plain. From there aircraft could threaten the shipping route between the United States and Australia. On 7 August 1942 US Marines landed, took the unfinished airfield and named it Henderson Field, beginning six months of fighting on land, at sea and in the air.

The Japanese answered with night naval attacks and reinforcement runs down the Slot, the channel between the islands, which Americans called the Tokyo Express. The first night battle at Savo Island sank four Allied cruisers. So many ships were lost in the waters between Guadalcanal, Savo and Florida that the sound became known as Iron Bottom Sound. On land, the Marines held the airfield perimeter in battles such as Bloody (Edson's) Ridge in September and the fighting along the Matanikau River.

By early 1943 Japan had lost thousands of soldiers to combat, disease and starvation, and in February it withdrew its remaining troops. The campaign was the first major Allied land offensive against Japan and a turning point in the Pacific. Fighting then moved west through New Georgia, where the Munda airfield battle and the sinking of John F. Kennedy's PT-109 near Gizo took place in 1943.

Solomon Islanders played a central role. Coastwatchers, usually colonial officers and planters, radioed warnings of Japanese aircraft and ships, and local scouts led by men such as Sergeant Major Jacob Vouza guided patrols and rescued airmen. Two scouts, Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, found Kennedy's crew and carried his coconut message to the Allies.

Today the battlefields are dotted with memorials, rusting guns and aircraft in private village museums, and wrecks lie off the beaches west of Honiara. Unexploded shells still turn up in gardens, and clearance teams work every year. Many sites are on customary land, so a small fee goes to the owners.

Kastom is the Pijin word for the customs, rules and knowledge handed down from ancestors. It covers who owns land and reef, how marriages are arranged, how disputes are settled and which places are tambu, or sacred. Most Solomon Islanders are practising Christians, and church and kastom sit together in daily life, sometimes easily and sometimes not.

More than 80% of land is held by clans under customary tenure. Ownership is traced through ancestors, often through the mother's line in parts of Guadalcanal and Isabel and through the father's line on Malaita. Reefs, fishing grounds and even individual trees can be owned, which is why visitors pay custom fees and why logging and mining deals often cause disputes within and between clans.

Shell money is the best-known kastom valuable. In the Langa Langa Lagoon of Malaita, families grind and drill small discs of red, white and black shell and string them into long strands. These are used in bride price, compensation payments and feasts, and a single high-value strand can take months to make. Dolphin teeth and porpoise teeth serve a similar role in some areas. The Central Bank's coins and notes show shell money as a symbol of the nation.

Compensation is central to settling wrongs, from an insult to a death. Paying it restores relations between groups, but disputes over amounts can drag on. Wantok ties, the network of people who share a language, bind communities together and also shape politics. For visitors, the practical rules are simple: ask before entering land, pay agreed fees to the right people, dress modestly and respect tambu places.

The Solomons lie at the eastern edge of the Coral Triangle, the region with the highest marine species diversity on earth. Reefs fringe almost every island, and the Western Province has two great lagoons. Marovo, enclosed by a double barrier reef off New Georgia, is among the largest saltwater lagoons in the world, and Roviana near Munda is scattered with small islands and old shrines.

Western Province communities were once known for headhunting raids by war canoe, and Roviana's Skull Island holds shrines with the skulls of chiefs and enemies. The canoes carried a small carved figurehead, the nguzunguzu, fixed at the waterline to protect the crew. Marovo carvers still make them, inlaid with nautilus shell, along with bowls and figures sold to visitors.

Logging has been the country's main export for decades, often exceeding sustainable levels and damaging reefs with sediment. Several communities have chosen conservation instead. Tetepare, the largest uninhabited island in the South Pacific, is protected by its descendant landowners, who run an eco-lodge and ranger programme and monitor leatherback and hawksbill turtles. Community marine protected areas are common, and fees from divers and lodge guests help justify them.

East Rennell, a raised coral atoll in the south, was listed by UNESCO in 1998 for Lake Tegano, the largest lake in the insular Pacific, and its endemic birds and plants. It has been on the World Heritage in Danger list since 2013 because of logging and invasive species. For visitors, choosing community-owned lodges and paying reef fees directly supports these efforts.

Honiara has grown from a wartime base into a city of about 90,000 people, many of them migrants from Malaita and other provinces who live in informal settlements around the edges. Jobs are scarce, and the gap between the capital's aid-funded offices and the villages is wide. Tension over land and jobs between Guadalcanal landowners and settlers lay behind the 1998–2003 conflict and still simmers.

The economy leans on logging, which is falling as forests run out, on tuna fishing licences and the Soltuna cannery at Noro, on the Gold Ridge mine, and on aid and remittances. Tourism is small, well under 40,000 visitors a year in recent years (check), mainly Australians, divers and war-history travellers.

Foreign policy has become a major theme. The 2019 switch from Taiwan to China brought Chinese-funded projects such as the 2023 Pacific Games stadium, and the 2022 security agreement with Beijing alarmed Australia and the United States, which reopened its embassy in 2023. Riots in November 2021, partly over the switch, burned much of Chinatown. Governments since have tried to balance partners.

Politics runs on shifting coalitions, and constituency development funds give MPs direct control over money for their areas. Elections in April 2024 returned Jeremiah Manele as prime minister (check). For travellers, the practical effect is a country that is generally calm but can see sudden unrest in the capital around political events; check advice before you go.