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( Kiribati)
Kiribati (pronounced ['ki?ib?s][1] or kee-ree-bahs in Gilbertese), officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island nation located in the central tropical Pacific Ocean. It comprises 32 atolls and one raised coral island dispersed over 3,500,000 square kilometres (1,351,000&_160;square&_160;miles) straddling the equator and bordering the International Date Line to the east. The name Kiribati is the local pronunciation of "Gilberts", derived from Kiribati's main island chain, the Gilbert Islands and its former colonial name, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The area now called Kiribati has been inhabited by Micronesians speaking the same Oceanic language since some time between 3000 BC[2] and 1300 AD. The area was not isolated; invaders from Tonga and Fiji later introduced Polynesian and Melanesian cultural aspects, respectively. Intermarriage tended to blur cultural differences and resulted in a significant degree of cultural homogenisation [3]. The islands were first sighted by British and American ships in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The main island chain was named the Gilbert Islands in 1820 by a Russian admiral, Adam von Krusenstern, and French captain Louis Duperrey, after a British captain, Thomas Gilbert, who crossed the archipelago in 1788. From the early 19th century, Western whalers, merchant vessels, and slave traders visited the islands, introducing diseases and firearms.[4]
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