Tahiti Research Paper

Tahiti is the largest island of French Polynesia, which is a part of the French Republic. The island is made up of seventy percent Polynesian ancestry along with Europeans, East Asians and people of mixed heritages. People of mixed heritage make up the largest population in French Polynesia. Most people in Tahiti live in the capital, Papeete. Tahiti is made up of one-hundred and eighteen islands. The official languages of the islands are Tahitian and French, but English is also spoken on most of the islands. Tahitians are considered to be the most genuinely friendly people in the world. Tahiti’s climate is dream-like, it has an average temperature of eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit year-round. It is located in the Southern Pacific Ocean and created by volcanic eruptions that happened about three million years ago. Tahiti has

Tahiti is said to have originally been settled between 300 and 600 AD by Polynesians from Tonga, Samoa and Fiji but the Europeans settling first started with the missionaries. At this time, it was estimated that Tahiti itself had 40,000 people with about another 20,000 on the surrounding islands. Along with European settlement brought diseases that the Polynesians had no immunity against such as smallpox, scarlet fever, typhoid fever and tuberculosis, this led to a drastic reduction to the population to the point that there were fewer than 6,000 native Tahitians on the islands. France had fully gained control of Tahiti in 1842 then proclaimed the island as a colony of France in 1880. Polynesians represent about 70% of the island’s population and the rest is made up of Europeans, Chinese and people with mixed heritages. French is the only official language although some English and Chinese is spoken, the Tahitian language is widely spoken on all the