The New Hebrides Convention of October 1887…

The New Hebrides Convention of October 1887 establishes a joint naval commission for the sole purpose of protecting French and British citizens in the Vanuatu group, but claims no jurisdiction over internal native affairs.

The first island in the Vanuatu group discovered by Spaniards was Espiritu Santo when, in 1606, the Portuguese explorer, Pedro Fernández de Quirós, had spied what he thought was a southern continent.

Europeans did not return until 1768, when Louis Antoine de Bougainville rediscovered the islands.

In 1774, Captain Cook had named the islands the New Hebrides, a name that is to last until independence.

In 1825, trader Peter Dillon's discovery of sandalwood on the island of Erromango had begun a rush that ended in 1830 after a clash between immigrant Polynesian workers and indigenous Melanesians.

During the 1860s, planters in Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia, and the Samoan Islands, in need of laborers, had encouraged the long-term indentured labor trade known as "blackbirding".

At the height of the blackbirding practice, more than one-half the adult male population of several of the Islands was working abroad.

It was at this time that missionaries, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, had arrived on the islands.

Settlers had also come, looking for land on which to establish cotton plantations.

When international cotton prices collapsed, they switched to coffee, cocoa, bananas, and, most successfully, coconuts.

Initially, British subjects from Australia had comprised the majority, but the establishment of the Caledonian Company of the New Hebrides in 1882 had soon tipped the balance in favor of French subjects.

By the turn of the century, the French will outnumber the British two to one.

The municipality of Franceville (present-day Port Vila) on Efate had been established during this period.

In 1878, Britain and France had declared all of the New Hebrides to be neutral territory, but the lack of a functional government had led to rising discontent among British and French colonists.

The French had been especially inconvenienced because French law recognizes marriages only when contracted under a civil authority (the nearest being in New Caledonia), whereas British law recognizes marriages conducted by local clergy.

The jumbling of French and British interests in the islands have brought petitions for one or another of the two powers to annex the territory.