The Black Pacific: Vanuatu, Decolonization, and the Global 1980s

In 1980, the Melanesian archipelago of Vanuatu achieved independence from French and British colonialism. The political condominium’s Black Power–affiliated Vanua’aku Pati (VP) threw off its imposed Scottish moniker of New Hebrides and crowned itself Vanuatu. The country considered itself a Melanesian nation and a Black Pacific member of the Africana world. Harnessing a distinctly Black internationalist foreign policy, the VP strategically positioned Vanuatu to be a radical advocate for the anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggles of Oceania and the Black Diaspora. This article shows how its immediate concerns were both ecological and political—nuclear testing in Oceania, French colonialism in New Caledonia, Indonesian imperialism in West Papua, and apartheid in South Africa. From political spaces like the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific conferences and its permanent mission to the United Nations based in Harlem, Vanuatu challenged nuclear testing in Oceania, denounced French colonialism in New Caledonia, and identified itself with radical states such as Libya.