Fiji

Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an archipelagic country in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about 1,100 nautical miles north-northeast of New Zealand, consisting of more than 330 islands, about 110 of them permanently inhabited, across roughly 18,300 square kilometers, with about 87 percent of the population living on the two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, and Suva, on Viti Levu, as its capital. Humans have lived in Fiji since the second millennium BC, first Austronesians and later Melanesians with some Polynesian influence; Europeans first visited in the seventeenth century, and after a brief period as an independent kingdom Britain established the Colony of Fiji in 1874, which lasted until independence in 1970 as the Dominion of Fiji. Following a series of coups in 1987 the military government declared Fiji a republic; a 2006 coup brought Commodore Frank Bainimarama to power, and after the Fijian High Court ruled the military leadership unlawful in 2009, President Ratu Josefa Iloilo abrogated the 1997 constitution and reappointed Bainimarama as interim prime minister, with Ratu Epeli Nailatikau succeeding Iloilo as president later that year; a democratic election on 17 September 2014, deemed credible by international observers, saw Bainimarama's FijiFirst party win 59.2 percent of the vote. Fiji has one of the most developed economies in the Pacific, built on forest, mineral and fish resources alongside tourism, remittances, bottled water exports and sugar cane, with the Fijian dollar as its currency.