Kiribati gained independence

On 12 July 1979, the Gilbert Islands became the independent Republic of Kiribati, ending British colonial rule. The change was made law by the Kiribati Independence Order 1979, issued by the United Kingdom’s Privy Council, which named that date as “Independence Day.”

The new country took the name Kiribati — the Gilbertese rendering of “Gilberts” — and joined the Commonwealth of Nations as a republic. Its territory is remarkable for its scale: a string of 33 atolls and reef islands spread across millions of square kilometers of the central Pacific, straddling both the equator and the 180th meridian.

That geography gives Kiribati an outsized footprint for a nation of modest population. Few independent states are so thinly settled across so much open ocean — a feature that, decades later, would put Kiribati at the center of global conversations about rising seas and the future of low-lying island countries.