Postage stamps and postal history of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands the same day. BRC's Gilbert and Ellice Definitive Stamps Postage stamps and postal history of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands The first mail service to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands was ad hoc, depending on which ships were calling at the various islands. A regular service began in 1911; Edward VII postage stamps of Fiji were overprinted and put on sale on 1 January of that year, followed in March by a set of four stamps depicting a "Pandanus" tree, inscribed . These were followed in 1912 by George V stamps of the common type, inscribed . A new definitive
History of the Pacific Islands Western Samoa became the first Pacific Island nation to gain political independence. In 1997, Samoa officially dropped the 'Western' from its name as it was an appendage from its colonial era. The human history of the Solomon Islands begins with the first settlement at least 30,000 years ago from New Guinea. They represented the furthest expansion of humans into the Pacific Ocean until the expansion of Austronesian-language speakers through the area around 4000 BCE, bringing new agricultural and maritime technology. Most of the languages spoken today in the Solomon Islands derive from this era, but some thirty languages of the