The Pacific Rim comprises the lands around the rim of the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Rim roughly overlaps with the geological Pacific Ring of Fire.
Contents
Definition
The term "Pacific Basin" includes both the Pacific Rim and the islands in the Pacific Ocean, which are often ignored in Pacific Rim frameworks. The "Pacific Basin" has also been used to exclusively refer to the islands in the Pacific Ocean (sometimes including Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, the Philippines and other large landmasses), but not the mainland rims of Asia and the Americas, which are separately referred to as the Pacific Rim under this framework. The term "The Pacific" often takes on a similar meaning, with the mainland rims of Asia and the Americas being excluded, and other large landmasses sometimes being included depending on the context. Some rare definitions of the Pacific Rim define it to exclude both the Asian and American mainlands and also the islands in the central Pacific. This defines the Pacific Rim as only including insular areas which are outside the main insular cultural zones of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, such as Australia, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, the Aleutian Islands and the Galápagos Islands.
The term "Asia Pacific" originated around the 1970s, and became a way to describe the Pacific Rim without including the Pacific coast of the Americas. It also sometimes includes landlocked Asian countries like Laos and South Asian countries like India who only border the Indian Ocean. Historically, the term "Indo-Pacific" has been used to refer to a tropical biogeographical region covering the entire Indian Ocean and sections of the western Pacific, including Northern Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia (excluding New Zealand), Southeast Asia and the part of East Asia south of the main Japanese islands. In the 21st century, Indo-Pacific has increasingly been used to denote a geopolitical region. The broadest definition of the Indo-Pacific as a geopolitical region includes the entire Pacific Rim and Pacific Basin, as well as any country or island touching Indian Ocean waters. However, Indo-Pacific is often geopolitically used in a similar manner to the term Asia-Pacific, since it does not typically include Indian Ocean-adjacent parts of the Middle East and East Africa, in addition to not typically including the Pacific coast of the Americas.
Organizations
A national park in Canada's Vancouver Island was named after the Pacific Rim, while in mainland Vancouver, there is a hotel named Fairmont Pacific Rim. Whidbey Island in the U.S. state of Washington also has an organization named the Pacific Rim Institute for Environmental Studies. Various intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations focus on the Pacific Rim, including Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Association of Pacific Rim Universities, Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the East-West Center, Sustainable Pacific Rim Cities, the Pacific Basin Institute and the Institute of Asian Research. In addition, the RIMPAC naval exercises are coordinated by United States Pacific Command. Japan's Okinawa Pan-Pacific International Film Festival is a film festival exclusively dedicated to films from the 46 states in the Pacific Rim/Basin.
APEC was co-founded by Australia and Japan in 1989, who since the 1970s had been working together on establishing other Pacific organizations. It had the title "Asia-Pacific" rather than "Pacific Rim" since it was originally envisioned to only include western Pacific countries who are in Asia or adjacent to Asia. However, Canada and the United States eventually became part of APEC's initial membership, and during the 1990s it expanded to include several Latin American countries bordering the Pacific. APEC and the CPTPP are the two largest economic-based Pacific Rim organizations, although in 2024, the CPTPP admitted the United Kingdom as its first non-Pacific Rim member, with other non-Pacific Rim countries like Argentina, Ukraine, Uruguay and the United Arab Emirates expressing interest in joining. Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea are the only countries who are members of both APEC (an organization dedicated to large Pacific Rim countries) and the Pacific Islands Forum (an organization dedicated to smaller Pacific island countries). Australia and New Zealand are also CPTPP members. The CPTPP is a legally binding free trade agreement, unlike APEC, which is based around general economic cooperation. The CPTPP was first signed in 2016 as the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), and included the United States but not China (who are both APEC members), as it was originally envisioned by Barack Obama's government as a way to counter Chinese economic influence by imposing a rules-based order. The TPP's direction shifted on January 23, 2017, when newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order formally pulling the United States out of the deal. Trump pulled out of the deal as part of his broader "America First" economic outlook, as he viewed the TPP as benefiting foreign countries at the expense of American workers. Following the American withdrawal, the remaining eleven members salvaged the initiative by signing the renamed CPTPP in March 2018, which officially entered into force in December 2018.
Demographics
China, Russia and the United States, often considered the world's three "superpowers", all have Pacific coastlines, although the majority of Russia's population lives significantly further away in the European-adjacent regions of the country. Most Russians living near the Pacific coast and on the islands of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands are ethnic Russians of Caucasian origin, rather than indigenous natives like the Nivkhs.
Among Pacific Rim states, Christianity is the dominant religion in Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Guatemala, Honduras, Kiribati, Mexico, Nauru, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niue, Norfolk Island, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia, Samoa, the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, the United States, Timor-Leste, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Wallis and Futuna. There is also a sizable Christian population in South Korea. Orthodox Christianity is the least widespread form of Christianity in the Pacific Rim, mainly being prevalent in Russia and areas of Russia's former colony Alaska, such as the Aleutian Islands and Kodiak Island. Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands still has a Russian Orthodox church on the island, which was built during the era of Russian rule. Kodiak Island also has Orthodox churches from the era of Russian rule. Sunni islam is the main religion in Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia, and Muslims still make up a meaningful proportion of the Pacific Rim's total population, due to Indonesia's large population. Buddhism is the primary religion in Cambodia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. Religious unaffiliation is high in China, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, North Korea and South Korea.
When compared to the Atlantic Rim, the Pacific Rim has a significantly smaller population of African diaspora, with many of them living on the Pacific coast of the United States (particularly Southern California). The Pacific coast of Latin America generally has less of an African-influence than the Caribbean coast of Latin America, although some areas such as Colombia have sizable African descended populations on the Pacific coast. In recent decades, Australia has also experienced some African immigration, primarily from South Sudan and the Horn of Africa. The term "the Black Pacific" has sometimes been used to historically frame African populations in Pacific coastal areas of Latin America (such as those in Colombia), although the term "the Black Pacific" has also been used to refer to Melanesia and occasionally Indigenous Australia.
Human settlements
Human occupation across these regions predates European contact by thousands to tens of thousands of years. The East Asia and Southeast Asia areas were settled by modern Homo sapiens roughly 60,000–70,000 years ago, Australia was reached by Aboriginal ancestors between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago and the Americas were populated via Beringia and coastal routes approximately 15,000–30,000 years ago. Most Pacific islands were settled in two distinct phases; Near Oceania (Melanesia) was first reached 40,000–50,000 years ago, while Remote Oceania (Micronesia, Polynesia, and New Zealand) was settled by Austronesian seafarers between 3,500 and 700 years ago, with New Zealand being the last settlement. Following European exploration and initial contact between the 15th and 17th centuries, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand developed overwhelmingly European-settler majority populations. Between 1800 and 1925 alone, approximately 48 million European emigrants moved to Australia, New Zealand and the Americas. Conversely, mainland and island Asia, as well as Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, largely retained their original demographic makeup. Russia is an exception, and the Russian Far East is one of the only areas on the western side of the Pacific with a European-majority population, along with Australia and New Zealand.
Some islands in the Pacific Rim remain uninhabited by civilians. Many of these islands are in the eastern Pacific and have no indigenous populations, such as France's Clipperton Island, Costa Rica's Cocos Island, Chile's Desventuradas Islands and Mexico's Revillagigedo Islands. Several U.S. islands in the central Pacific are also uninhabited by civilians, including Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, Palmyra Atoll and Wake Island. Most of the Aleutian Islands at the far western end of the chain have been uninhabited since the 18th, 19th or early 20th centuries, like Amchitka Island, Attu Island and Kiska, although these lands were historically inhabited by the Aleut people. During World War II, Japan briefly invaded the Aleutian Islands, including Attu, which had the last civilian population left at the far western end of the chain. Since then, nearly the entire western end of the chain has been uninhabited. Shemya Island was an exception to the postwar depopulation of the far western Aleutians, remaining one of the few islands in the region with a non-civilian human population after World War II, largely because of its continued military use. The island was developed as a U.S. Army air base in 1943 during the Aleutian Islands campaign, and after the war it was retained as a military installation because of its strategic position on the Great Circle Route between North America and Asia. During the Cold War, Shemya became an important U.S. military and intelligence outpost, hosting facilities for missile and space surveillance and strategic reconnaissance operations because of its proximity to the Soviet Union. With the end of the Cold War, however, military activity on the island declined substantially; the installation was placed on caretaker status in 1995, greatly reducing the number of military personnel stationed there, although a small permanent population remained to operate and maintain the facilities.
Population distribution
Mainland Australia is overwhelmingly coastal in terms of population: about 87% of Australia's mainland population lived within 50 kilometres of the coast in 2019. Its largest population concentrations are on the eastern and southeastern seaboard, facing the Pacific, while Perth and Adelaide are the only other major population centers outside this broad eastern concentration. Inland settlement remains comparatively sparse, with Alice Springs being the best-known major inland center, serving as a regional administrative, transport and services hub despite its location in the extremely dry central Australian interior.
Canada displays a comparable concentration of population in its more temperate southern regions, particularly near the United States–Canada border. Nearly two-thirds of Canadians lived within 100 kilometers of the United States border in the 2006 census, while the interior and north are much more sparsely populated. Fertile agricultural land, transportation networks and a milder climate encouraged settlement in the south, whereas large areas of the Canadian Shield have thin or nutrient-poor soils, and the northern landscape presents additional difficulties from extreme cold, permafrost and limited infrastructure. Whitehorse, in the Yukon interior, demonstrates that substantial urban settlement is nevertheless possible in Canada's north: it has become the territory's dominant population center and regional service hub despite a dry subarctic climate with very cold winters, in a role that is broadly comparable to Alice Springs in central Australia.
In the 21st century, the private Century Initiative has advocated increasing Canada's population to 100 million by 2100, with the principal population growth envisaged in already-populated urban and economic regions rather than throughout the country; the Government of Canada has explicitly stated that the 100-million figure is not government policy. At the same time, Canada's Arctic sea ice has declined substantially and the ice-free season is projected to lengthen further with global warming, potentially improving seasonal marine access to parts of the north. This could make a larger share of Canada's territory more economically accessible over the long term.
China was the world's most populous country until India overtook it in 2023. From the late 1970s, China implemented the one-child policy to slow rapid population growth, later easing it to a two-child policy in 2016 and a three-child policy in 2021. As China's birth rate and number of women of childbearing age have declined, government policy has increasingly shifted from restricting births toward encouraging them, including measures intended to reduce the costs of raising children.
Geography and zoology
15 fully independent nations in the Pacific Rim have no land borders to other countries; Australia, Fiji, Japan, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Aside from Samoa and Tonga, all of these nations are in the Eastern Hemisphere, with Fiji, Kiribati and New Zealand having land in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Brunei, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste are considered divided island countries due to having land borders, while Singapore naturally has no land borders, but is connected to Malaysia through a man-made bridge and causeway. Taiwan also has no land borders but its sovereignty is disputed. The smallest country in the Pacific Rim is Nauru, while the largest is Russia. The largest country which only borders Pacific waters is China. Some of the furthest cities from the Pacific Ocean which technically belong to Pacific Rim countries include the European Russian city of Kaliningrad, Ürümqi in western China (one of the most inland cities in the world), the U.S. city of Portland in the eastern state of Maine, and the Canadian city of St. John's in the eastern province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Polar-adjacent lands in the Pacific Rim receive animal populations from the Antarctic and Arctic, including Australia's Macquarie Island in the far South Pacific, which has a large penguin population, and Alaska's St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, which occasionally receives polar bears wandering from the north.
Economy
The economies of East Asia are among the most industrialized and internationally integrated economies in the Pacific Rim. Taiwan and South Korea are major centers of semiconductor manufacturing, while Japan and China have large automotive, machinery and electronics industries, as well as other manufacturing industries. Hong Kong is an international financial and commercial center. Macau's economy is heavily dependent on tourism and gaming. North Korea has a substantially different economic structure from other Asian countries. Its economy remains dominated by state ownership and central planning, with mining, agriculture, and military-related production occupying important roles. In recent years, North Korea has sought to build a tourism industry, as highlighted by the 2025 opening of the Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone, a sprawling multi-billion-dollar beach resort located on the country's eastern coast in Wonsan.
Australia, Canada, and the Russian Far East are sparsely populated areas and have economies in which natural resources play a significant role. Australia is a major exporter of iron ore, coal, natural gas, and other minerals. The country also has a mature tourism industry, primarily centered around the three east coast states of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. Canada has substantial energy, mining, forestry, and agricultural industries. The Russian Far East has economies centered on oil and gas, coal, fisheries, timber, and mineral resources. Russia's Sakhalin possesses substantial reserves of oil, natural gas, coal, and other mineral resources, as well as important fisheries and forest resources. The geographic proximity of Sakhalin to Japan has historically made its oil and gas resources particularly significant to Japanese energy security. The Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 projects were developed partly with Japanese participation and became sources of crude oil and LNG for the Japanese market. Australia's proximity to Japan relative to many other resource-producing regions also makes it an important component of Japan's energy supply network.
Southeast Asia contains a diverse group of manufacturing, resource, and service economies. Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have developed significant manufacturing industries, including electronics, automotive production, textiles, and other export-oriented industries. Singapore is a major center for finance, shipping, logistics, and advanced manufacturing, while Brunei and Timor-Leste remain more dependent on petroleum revenues. Cambodia has developed a large garment and footwear industry. Tourism is another important part of several Southeast Asian economies. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam in particular receive large numbers of international visitors, with destinations such as Bali and Bangkok supporting extensive tourism industries.
In media
In 1989, an Australian miniseries titled Man on the Rim: The Peopling of the Pacific debuted, focusing on the human origins of the Pacific Rim, including the islands. The series also had a book counterpart released, and was hosted by doctor Alan Thorne from the National University of Australia. In 1997, a British miniseries titled Full Circle premiered, hosted by Michael Palin. For the series, Palin traveled across many of the countries on the Pacific Rim, visiting Australia, Bolivia (which is landlocked but used to have Pacific access), Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, South Korea, the United States and Vietnam. Palin also visited some of the outlying islands of these countries, including Chile's Chiloé Island and Juan Fernández Islands, and Kodiak Island and Little Diomede Island, which are part of Alaska. Little Diomede Island was chosen as a location due to being the northernmost point of the Pacific Basin, as it is situated on the Bering Strait connecting Pacific waters to Arctic waters. For the show, Palin was also additionally going to visit Attu Island in the Aleutian Islands, but he was unable to. Palin was also unable to enter North Korea as he had originally planned.
Chronology of European exploration in the Pacific Rim
c. 1000: Canada — Leif Eiriksson and other Norse voyagers reached the northern Atlantic coast of present-day Canada, with the archaeological site at L'Anse aux Meadows representing the earliest authenticated European presence in North America.
1499: Colombia — Alonso de Ojeda explored the Caribbean coast.
1501: Panama — Rodrigo de Bastidas explored the isthmus.
1502: Costa Rica — Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean coast.
1502: Nicaragua — Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean coast.
1502: Honduras — Christopher Columbus reached the Bay Islands and mainland coast.
1509: Singapore — Diogo Lopes de Sequeira reached Malacca in 1509, establishing the earliest documented Portuguese contact with the wider Singapore Strait region; Portuguese sources subsequently recorded Singapore's earlier history after the capture of Malacca in 1511.
1511: Malaysia — Portugal captured Malacca.
1511: Cambodia — early European residencies in Cambodia followed the Portuguese seizure of Malacca in 1511.
1511: Thailand — Portuguese contact with Ayutthaya began.
1512: Indonesia — Portuguese expeditions reached the Moluccas.
1513: China, Hong Kong and Macau — Jorge Álvares reached the South China coast/Tamão-Lintin region.
List of countries on the Pacific Rim
This is a list of countries that are generally considered to be a part of the Pacific Rim or Pacific Basin, since they lie along the Pacific Ocean.
Shipping
The Pacific has much international shipping. The top 10 busiest container ports, with the exception of Dubai's Port of Jebel Ali (9th), are in the Rim nations. They are home to 29 of the world's 50 busiest container shipping ports:
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In April 2011, an organization called the Pacific Alliance was formed among Latin American Pacific Rim countries. The Pacific Alliance currently has four full members: Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. Costa Rica and Ecuador are pursuing full membership, while Singapore has become the first external country to obtain Associated State status. Other non-Latin American Pacific countries (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Korea) are candidates for Associated State status, while countries such as Japan, China, and Indonesia participate only as observers, along with several countries outside the Pacific Rim. It is sometimes seen as a counterpart to the Mercosur trade agreement among Atlantic Latin American countries. However, the Pacific Alliance is generally more outward-looking toward Asia-Pacific trade and liberalisation, whereas Mercosur, founded in 1991 by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, has historically focused more heavily on South American regional integration and a common market.
Clipperton Island is a highly isolated atoll in the same general eastern Pacific area as Ecuador's populated Galápagos Islands. Unlike Galápagos, it has almost no natural freshwater supply suitable for sustaining a permanent population and little arable land, making habitation exceptionally difficult. Its geographic location subsequently led to a sovereignty dispute between France and Mexico; Mexico, whose Pacific coast is the nearest American mainland to Clipperton at roughly 1,100–1,300 km away, established a human settlement there in the early 20th century in an effort to reinforce its claim. The settlement depended on regular supplies from Acapulco, but the Mexican Revolution disrupted those shipments, leaving the inhabitants increasingly without food or other necessities. Most died from scurvy, malnutrition and related issues, and the remaining community endured a catastrophic breakdown of social order, with some being murdered. The survivors were rescued by the USS Yorktown in July 1917. Afterward the island was abandoned as a permanent settlement, although the United States briefly used it during World War II. Clipperton has remained uninhabited since 1945, with subsequent human presence consisting principally of occasional French naval visits and scientific expeditions. France's sovereignty was ultimately confirmed by international arbitration in 1931.
The Bonin Islands (currently part of Japan) were first recorded by Europeans in the 16th century as uninhabited islands. Their extreme isolation subsequently produced an unusually high level of endemism through long-term evolution of species that reached the islands by chance; around 40% of their vascular plants, 25% of their insects, and more than 90% of their land-snail species are endemic, leading to comparisons with the Galápagos Islands, which similarly were long uninhabited and developed high levels of endemism. From 1830, however, the islands developed a permanent settler population of diverse backgrounds, including Europeans, Americans, Hawaiians and people of other Pacific origins, before Japanese colonization expanded later in the 19th century; the resulting community developed a distinctive mixed cultural identity. Iwo Jima, the southernmost of the major inhabited islands of the group, later became a heavily fortified Japanese military position and in 1945 the site of the Battle of Iwo Jima, one of the most famous and costly battles of World War II. Like with the Bonin Islands, Chile's Juan Fernández Islands and the Galápagos Islands were also discovered uninhabited in the 16th century, although these two locations developed settler populations drawn largely from the adjacent South American mainland and subsequently adopted the cultural and linguistic norms of their parent countries, most notably the Spanish language. The Galápagos was incorporated into Ecuador in 1832 and later attracted settlers from mainland Ecuador, while permanent settlement in the Juan Fernández Islands developed under Chilean administration and was reinforced by Chilean settlers alongside immigrants from Europe.
The Pitcairn Islands and Australia's Norfolk Island were both settled by Europeans after being discovered uninhabited, but each had evidence of earlier Polynesian activity. On Pitcairn, early European visitors found numerous Polynesian artefacts, including stone adzes, religious carvings, burial sites and earth ovens, indicating an earlier settlement whose precise date and origins remain uncertain; Pitcarn was later permanently settled in 1790 by the mixed Anglo-Tahitian community descended from the British Bounty mutineers. Norfolk Island likewise preserves clear archaeological evidence of a previous Polynesian settlement, particularly at Emily Bay, dated broadly to about AD 1150–1450 or the 13th–15th centuries, before the island was found uninhabited by Europeans in 1774 and colonized by Britain in 1788. Australia's Lord Howe Island, on the other hand, is notably different, since extensive archaeological investigation has found no evidence of prehistoric activity from Polynesians or any other humans before European arrival. The island's first known European sighting was in 1788; permanent settlement followed in 1834.
Mexico is the largest Latin American Pacific Rim economy, and has a sizeable manufacturing sector and is a major producer of automobiles, electronics, machinery, and other manufactured goods. Chile and Peru are major producers of copper and other minerals, while agriculture, including coffee cultivation, remains important in several Central American economies. Panama occupies a distinctive position because of the Panama Canal, which provides a major maritime link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. A large share of canal traffic involves trade between the east coast of the United States and East Asia, making the canal an important part of Pacific trade networks as well as the Panamanian economy. Tourism is significant across much of the Pacific coast of Latin America. Costa Rica has developed a substantial ecotourism industry and Ecuador's Galápagos Islands are an internationally recognized tourism destination, subject to extensive environmental regulation. Chile's Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is another Latin American destination closely associated with tourism and cultural heritage, along with Peru's Machu Pichu. Mexico's Acapulco on the Pacific coast was historically a prominent tourist destination, but its popularity has declined since the 2010s, due to rising gang violence.
The United States has traditionally been the largest economy on the Pacific Rim and contains major economic centers along its Pacific coast, including Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, Seattle and Portland, Oregon. These centers are important in technology, finance, manufacturing, higher education, shipping, and entertainment and maintain extensive commercial links with East Asia and other Pacific economies. The Hollywood film and television industry forms part of a wider Pacific Rim production network, with animation work often undertaken in Taiwan, the Philippines or South Korea (such as for The Simpsons, which has been animated in Seoul since the late 1980s). Substantial filming and post-production activity occurs in Vancouver and other Pacific Rim cities, with Vancouver providing generous tax breaks to Hollywood productions.
The economies of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia vary considerably in size and structure but commonly have small domestic markets and limited export bases. Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Hawaii, Samoa and other island economies receive substantial income from international tourism. Fisheries and development assistance are important sources of income in small Melanesian and Micronesian islands, which generally have less developed tourism industries than those in Polynesia. Among larger Melanesian islands, New Caledonia has a significant nickel industry, while Papua New Guinea has major mineral and liquefied natural gas exports. Along with Fiji, New Caledonia has the most developed tourism sector in Melanesia, although it's more heavily reliant on attracting tourists from Australia, and is vulnerable to changes in Australian tourism habits. New Zealand's export economy includes dairy products, meat, forestry products, and other agricultural commodities. The Micronesian island of Nauru, formerly an Australian colony, had one of the highest GDP per Capitas in the world during the 1970s and 1980s, due to its phosphate industry, before eventually suffering an economic downturn. Before the economic downturn, Nauru was earning 70 times more than its island neighbors were. Other countries in Micronesia, including the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Palau, have some of the lowest GDPs in the world. Since becoming independent countries, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau have had financial stability from a Compact of Free Association with the United States, while Kiribati relies heavily on aid from countries such as Australia and New Zealand.
1513: Pearl Islands — Vasco Núñez de Balboa first sighted the archipelago during his 1513 expedition across the Isthmus of Panama. Indigenous informants had already told Balboa of islands in the Gulf of Panama rich in pearls, and after reaching the Pacific coast in September 1513 he visited the islands and named them the Islas de las Perlas ("Pearl Islands").
1513: United States — Juan Ponce de León reached Florida.
1515: Timor-Leste — the first Europeans to arrive were the Portuguese in 1515.
1516: Coiba Island — Bartolomé Hurtado, a lieutenant of Gaspar de Espinosa, became the first recorded European to visit Coiba during an expedition along the Pacific coast of Panama.
1516: Vietnam — Portuguese navigators first arrived at Hội An in 1516, establishing the earliest documented Portuguese contact with present-day Vietnam.
1516–1517: Hainan — Portuguese navigators operating in the South China Sea reached or documented the island during the early Portuguese expansion into China.
1517: Mexico — Francisco Hernández de Córdoba's expedition reached the Yucatán Peninsula.
1520: Chile — Ferdinand Magellan passed through the Strait of Magellan.
1521: Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands — Ferdinand Magellan's expedition reached the Marianas.
1521: Philippines — Ferdinand Magellan's expedition reached Samar and Homonhon.
1521: Brunei — European contact occurred during the Magellan expedition.
1521: French Polynesia — Ferdinand Magellan's expedition sighted Puka-Puka in the Tuamotu Archipelago, generally regarded as the first recorded European encounter with the islands now comprising French Polynesia.
1521: Kiribati — Ferdinand Magellan's expedition sighted Flint Island in the Line Islands, making it the earliest European sighting of territory now belonging to Kiribati.
1522: Tiger Island — Gil González Dávila and Andrés Niño explored the Gulf of Fonseca. Dávila reached an island in the gulf which he named Petronila; Honduran historians have identified this island variously with either Meanguera Island or Tiger Island.
1524: Gorgona Island — Diego de Almagro led the first recorded Spanish visit to Gorgona, naming the island San Felipe.
1524: Guatemala — Pedro de Alvarado led the first Spanish expedition into the territory of present-day Guatemala, entering from Chiapas in January 1524 and beginning the Spanish conquest of the K'iche', Kaqchikel and other Indigenous polities. A Spanish settlement, Santiago de Guatemala, was formally established at Iximché in July 1524.
1524: El Salvador — Pedro de Alvarado entered present-day El Salvador from Guatemala and fought the first recorded Spanish engagements with the Pipil population.
1525: Federated States of Micronesia — Diogo da Rocha is generally credited with the earliest European contact with the Caroline Islands, probably including Ulithi, which is now part of the Federated States of Micronesia.
1526: Ecuador — Spanish reconnaissance reached the coast.
1526: Cocos Island[note2] — Juan Cabezas is credited by Costa Rican sources with being the first human to sight the island.
1526: Marshall Islands — Alonso de Salazar reached the islands.
1526–1527: New Guinea — Jorge de Meneses became the first European generally credited with reaching New Guinea when he was blown off course while travelling from Malacca toward the Moluccas. His exact landfall is uncertain and may have been in western New Guinea, now part of Indonesia.
1527: Foca Island and Lobos de Tierra — Francisco Pizarro reached these islands in 1527, the year before he first arrived in what is now mainland Peru.
1528: Peru — in April 1528, Francisco Pizarro and his small band of men reached the northern Peruvian coast near Tumbes, and encountered the Inca Empire. The local inhabitants welcomed the Spaniards warmly and they reported seeing a sophisticated stone city with an abundance of gold and silver decorations inside the homes of local chiefs.
1528: Clipperton Island[note2] — Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón's reported Isla Médanos may have been Clipperton.
1530 or earlier: Malpelo Island[note2] — the island appears on early Peruvian maps; the exact first human sighting is uncertain.
1532–1550: Ballestas Islands and Chincha Islands — the Ballestas Islands and Chincha Islands were known to Europeans by the mid-16th century: Pedro Cieza de León, whose travels in Peru date from 1532–1550, explicitly describes the Ballista and Chincha islands off the Peruvian coast. The surviving record does not establish an exact date or a particular European expedition for the first sighting, so a precise discovery year is uncertain.
1532: Tres Marías Islands[note2] — Diego Hurtado de Mendoza led the expedition that discovered the islands, which were subsequently also claimed and visited by an expedition sent by Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán.
1533: Revillagigedo Islands[note2] — Fernando de Grijalva is the first known human to have sighted the archipelago.
1535: Galápagos Islands[note2] — Tomás de Berlanga became the first known human to land on the islands. He was blown off course while sailing from Panama toward Peru and reached the Galápagos on March 10. When Berlanga and his men landed on the first island, they found an extremely dry, rocky and apparently uninhabited landscape. They searched desperately for fresh water but initially found none, instead encountering animals such as giant tortoises. Berlanga considered the land so barren and stony that little could be cultivated.
1539: Cedros Island — reached during Spanish exploration associated with Francisco de Ulloa.
1539: Isla Ángel de la Guarda — Francisco de Ulloa's 1539 expedition of the Gulf of California is traditionally credited with the first European discovery of Ángel de la Guarda Island. The island was subsequently recorded and explored by later expeditions, including Wenceslaus Linck in the 1760s.
1539 Isla Magdalena — Francisco de Ulloa's expedition of the Pacific coast of the Baja California Peninsula reached and explored the coastal region of present-day Magdalena Bay in December 1539; a Mexican study of the islands and archipelagos identifies Ulloa's voyage as the expedition that discovered Magdalena Bay and the islands forming it. The surviving voyage account does not unambiguously identify the present-day Magdalena Island by name.
1539: Santa Margarita Island — Francisco de Ulloa is identified as the first European to discover Santa Margarita Island in a study of the island held by the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur. He reached the island on November 25, while exploring the Pacific coast of the Baja California Peninsula, and it was later given the name Santa Margarita by Sebastián Vizcaíno.
1539: Tiburón Island — Francisco de Ulloa's expedition reached the region of Tiburón while surveying the Gulf of California, making 1539 the earliest documented Spanish exploration of the island.
1540: Chiloé Island — Alonso de Camargo became the first Spaniard recorded to sight the coast of Chiloé while travelling toward Peru. Francisco de Ulloa subsequently explored the archipelago in 1553 and is often regarded as its first European explorer in the more substantial sense.
1540: Islas San Benito — a study of the legal history of Mexican islands identifies Francisco de Ulloa's 1539–1540 expedition as having discovered the San Benito Islands after reaching Cedros Island. A reconstruction of Ulloa's route, however, notes that severe weather makes it uncertain whether his ships passed to the east or west of the San Benito group.
1540: Zhoushan Archipelago — Portuguese private traders were active at Shuangyu, a port in the Zhoushan island group off Ningbo, by the 1540s; a scholarly history of the maritime region records Portuguese traders gathering there in 1540.
1542: Channel Islands — Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo reached the islands.
1542–1543: Ryukyu Islands — Portuguese mariners reached or were blown into Ryukyuan waters, and European accounts from the period describe contact with the Ryukyu Kingdom.
1543: Bonin Islands[note2] — Ruy López de Villalobos is credited with the first known human sighting.
1543: Japan — Portuguese sailors reached Tanegashima.
1544: Mancera Island — Juan Bautista Pastene encountered the island during his 1544 expedition and recorded it under the name Imperial; it was then known by several other names before becoming Isla Mancera. The island was already known as Guiguacabin to the Indigenous inhabitants.
1544: Mocha Island — Juan Bautista Pastene sighted and explored Mocha Island on September 10, naming it San Nicolás de Tolentino.
1544: Santa María Island — Juan Bautista Pastene encountered and named the island during his 1544 expedition along the Chilean coast; a detailed study held by Chile's Servicio Nacional del Patrimonio Cultural describes the island as having been discovered during Pastene's first voyage. A later 1550 expedition provides the first detailed account of its Indigenous population and direct contact.
1544: Taiwan — Portuguese sailors recorded the island.
1553: Chonos Archipelago — Francisco de Ulloa's 1553 expedition was the first recorded European exploration of the island region south of Chiloé, and the first recorded European voyage through the Chonos Archipelago. The expedition recorded the islands under the name Islas de Nuestra Señora de la O; the surviving account also describes encounters with Indigenous inhabitants farther south.
1553: Guafo Island — Francisco de Ulloa sighted Guafo Island during his 1553 expedition and named it San Martín. The expedition's surviving account records the island before continuing into further archipelagos of southern Chile.
1553: Guaitecas Archipelago — contemporary and later Chilean accounts identify Francisco de Ulloa's 1553 expedition as the first European navigation of the Guaitecas Archipelago.
1553: Madre de Dios Island — for Francisco de Ulloa's 1553 expedition, Madre de Dios Island has traditionally been identified with the Madre de Dios recorded in the expedition's geographical nomenclature. A later Chilean naval study states that the island was given the name Madre de Dios by Ulloa's expedition in 1553.
1563: Desventuradas Islands[note2] — Juan Fernández made the first confirmed sighting. Some accounts list the sighting as being in 1574 rather than 1563
1568: Solomon Islands and Tuvalu — Álvaro de Mendaña reached the islands.
1568: Wake Island[note2] — Spanish explorers under Álvaro de Mendaña reached the island.
1574: Juan Fernández Islands[note2] — Juan Fernández sighted the archipelago on November 22.
1577: Korea — Domingos Monteiro and the crew of a Portuguese trading vessel were blown to the Korean coast during a voyage to Japan. The vessel was attacked by Korean forces and escaped without establishing a permanent presence; this is regarded as the earliest documented European contact with the Korean Peninsula as a whole, although the surviving evidence is fragmentary.
1579: Farallon Islands — Francis Drake made the first surviving European record and landed on the islands.
1579: Palau — Francis Drake became the first European known with confidence to make landfall on one of the islands of Palau during his circumnavigation of the globe. Earlier Spanish sightings are possible but remain uncertain.
1595: Cook Islands — Álvaro de Mendaña reached the islands.
1602: Guadalupe Island — Sebastián Vizcaíno's Spanish expedition became the first documented European expedition to record the island, sailing past it during his 1602 survey of the Pacific coast of Baja California.
1606: Australia — Willem Janszoon made the first documented European contact.
1606: Torres Strait Islands — Luís Vaz de Torres, commanding part of the Pedro Fernandes de Queirós expedition, sailed through the strait between New Guinea and Australia in 1606, making the first recorded European passage through the region.
1606: Pitcairn Islands — sighted by Pedro Fernandes de Queirós.
1606: Vanuatu — Pedro Fernandes de Queirós reached the islands.
1616: Tonga — Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire reached Tonga in 1616 and 1643.
1616: Wallis and Futuna — Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire reached the islands.
1619: Diego Ramírez Islands — Bartolomé García de Nodal and Gonzalo García de Nodal, with cosmographer and chief pilot Diego Ramírez de Arellano, sighted the islands on February 10 during their expedition to the southern extremity of South America. The archipelago was named after Diego Ramírez de Arellano.
1642: Bruny Island — Abel Tasman sailed along the coast of Bruny Island during his 1642 voyage, making him the first recorded European to visit the region. The island was later identified as an island more clearly by Tobias Furneaux in 1773.
1642: Maria Island — Abel Tasman sighted Maria Island from the sea and named it after Maria van Diemen, wife of the governor of Batavia.
1642: New Zealand — Abel Tasman made the first firm documented European sighting.
1642: Schouten Island — Abel Tasman sighted and named Schouten Island during his voyage along the coast of Tasmania.
1642: Tasmania — Abel Tasman sighted and mapped the island.
1643: Fiji — Abel Tasman reached the islands.
1643: Kuril Islands — Maarten Gerritszoon de Vries explored the southern Kuril Islands, including Iturup and Urup.
1643: Sakhalin — Maarten Gerritszoon de Vries mapped the eastern and southern coasts of Sakhalin, including Cape Aniva and Cape Patience.
1653: Jeju Island — Hendrick Hamel and the crew of the Sperwer reached Jeju Island.
1722: Easter Island — Jacob Roggeveen reached the island, and noted that it was inhabited and had numerous large stone heads.
1722: Samoa and American Samoa — Jacob Roggeveen reached the Samoan islands.
1728: St. Lawrence Island and Diomede Islands — Vitus Bering reached the region.
1741: Aleutian Islands, Kodiak Island and Alexander Archipelago — Russian expeditions led by Vitus Bering and Alexei Chirikov reached the region.
1741: Commander Islands — Vitus Bering reached the islands during the return voyage of the 1741 expedition, after his ship was separated from Alexei Chirikov's vessel and subsequently wrecked on Bering Island.
1765: Tokelau — John Byron reached the islands.
1767: Tahiti — Samuel Wallis aboard HMS Dolphin made the first European visit to Tahiti, arriving off the island on June 19 and anchoring at Matavai Bay. Wallis named it King George III Island.
1770: Booby Island — James Cook landed on the island on August 23 while passing through Torres Strait and named it Booby Island because of its seabirds.
1770: Dunk Island — James Cook passed the island on June 8 while sailing along the Queensland coast, and named it Dunk Island after George Montagu-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax.
1770: Eagle Island — James Cook and his crew landed on the small island south-east of Lizard Island on August 13 and recorded it as Eagle Island.
1770: Family Islands — James Cook sailed through the island group on June 8 while travelling north along the Queensland coast.
1770: Fraser Island — James Cook made the first recorded European sighting of the island in May 1770 while sailing along the Queensland coast, passing its eastern side and naming Indian Head and Sandy Cape. Cook believed the landform was a peninsula rather than an island; Matthew Flinders subsequently landed there in 1802, but also did not establish that it was an island.
1770: Lizard Island — James Cook reached and landed on Lizard Island in August 1770, naming it for the numerous monitor lizards observed there.
1770: Magnetic Island — James Cook passed the island on June 5 and recorded it as "Magnetical Island" because his compass behaved abnormally in its vicinity.
1770: Moreton Island — James Cook made the first recorded European sighting of Moreton Bay and Moreton Island during his voyage along the east coast of Australia in 1770.
1770: Possession Island — James Cook landed on the island on August 22 and recorded Indigenous inhabitants.
1770: Stradbroke Island — James Cook made the first documented European sighting and named the island's northeastern point Point Lookout.
1770: Whitsunday Islands — James Cook entered the Whitsundays on June 1 and June 3, 1770, naming Whitsunday Passage and recording the surrounding islands during his voyage along the Queensland coast.
1773: Cape Barren Island — Tobias Furneaux sighted the island on March 18 and named it Cape Barren because of its barren appearance.
1773: Furneaux Group — Tobias Furneaux recorded a series of islands in Bass Strait in March 1773 after becoming separated from James Cook's expedition. The group was subsequently surveyed in greater detail by Matthew Flinders in 1798.
1773: Flinders Island — Tobias Furneaux and the crew of HMS Adventure were the first Europeans to sight Flinders Island in March 1773.
1774: Haida Gwaii — Juan Pérez sighted the archipelago.
1774: New Caledonia — James Cook sighted the island.
1774: Niue — James Cook made the first documented European landing on Niue during his second Pacific voyage in 1774.
1774: Norfolk Island — James Cook sighted and landed on the island.
1774: San Juan Islands — Spanish expeditions encountered the islands; George Vancouver followed in 1792.
1775: Alcatraz Island — Juan Manuel de Ayala charted the island during the mapping of San Francisco Bay.
1778: Hawaii and Vancouver Island — James Cook reached Hawaii and Nootka Sound.
1786: Pribilof Islands — Gavriil Pribylov reached the uninhabited islands.
1788: Bounty Islands — William Bligh discovered the Bounty Islands on September 19 while commanding HMS Bounty on the voyage from Britain to Tahiti. He did not land on the islands.
1788: Coral Sea Islands — John Shortland discovered Middleton Reef on July 20 while returning from Australia to Batavia. The broader Coral Sea Islands and reefs were subsequently charted by numerous European navigators.
1788: Lord Howe Island[note2] — Henry Lidgbird Ball made the first recorded sighting of Lord Howe Island on February 17 and landed there on March 13, 1790 aboard HMS Supply.
1789: Kingman Reef[note2] — an early sighting is attributed to Edmund Fanning.
1791: Chatham Islands — William Robert Broughton became the first European to sight the Chatham Islands on November 29, after his ship, HMS Chatham, was blown off course. He landed on Rēkohu and claimed the islands for Britain.
1793: Salas y Gómez Island — the Chilean government records that the island was discovered by the Spanish pilot José Salas Valdés on August 23. It was rediscovered and explored by José Manuel Gómez in October 1805, after which the island became known as Salas y Gómez.
1796: Johnston Atoll[note2] — the ship Sally recorded the atoll.
1798: Palmyra Atoll[note2] — human sighting recorded in the late eighteenth century.
1798: Nauru — John Fearn sighted the island.
1803: Cato Reef — John Park and Robert Fowler encountered Cato Island and the surrounding reef on August 17 after the Cato and HMS Porpoise were wrecked on the adjacent reef system. The wreck occurred during a voyage from Sydney toward Torres Strait, and Matthew Flinders was one of the passengers.
1803: Wreck Reef — Matthew Flinders encountered the reef on August 17 when HMS Porpoise and the Cato were wrecked there.
1806: Auckland Islands — Abraham Bristow became the first European to visit the Auckland Islands on August 18, naming them after Lord Auckland.
1810: Macquarie Island[note2] — Frederick Hasselborough of the sealing brig Perseverance sighted and landed on Macquarie Island on July 11.
1818: Baker Island[note2] — Elisha Folger documented the island.
1821: Jarvis Island[note2] — the crew of the Eliza Francis reported the island.
1821: Nunivak Island — Mikhail Vasiliev of the Russian-American Company became the first known European to visit Nunivak Island, landing from the Otkrytie on July 11.
1842: Howland Island[note2] — first recorded human sighting is generally dated to this year.
1859: Midway Atoll[note2] — Captain N. C. Brooks reached the atoll.