ASMR ~ Choiseul, Solomon Islands History & Geography ~ Soft Spoken Map Tracing

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:26]Good evening and welcome.

[00:00:29]Tonight, we will be going over the history and geography of Choiseul in the Solomon Islands. Beautiful Solomons.

[00:00:45]Now, if you're new to my channel, welcome. If not, you know that typically what I do is we look at this area on my atlas and then we go over to Google Earth to look at it on Google Earth.

[00:00:57]Unfortunately, the pictures here are nonexistent or just not that great.

[00:01:05]It's It looks awful on Google Earth. So, any Solomon Islanders out there, head over here, start taking some pictures, upload them to Google, and maybe we'll revisit it.

[00:01:15]Only if you do that, though.

[00:01:18]Uh for example, there is an island right here called Taro. You can see it's a little tiny island just off the coast there, which is technically the capital of the province.

[00:01:28]It's where it's all administered. You can see the airport's there.

[00:01:31]Everything's there on Taro. It is completely pixelated on Google Earth.

[00:01:36]You can't see anything there. So, like that's the one place where there would be stuff to see and it's all pixelated and you can't tap on anything. It's absolutely rotten.

[00:01:48]What I did, though, is I filmed myself zooming out on Google Earth so that you could see exactly where we are in the world if you're not quite sure where the Solomon Islands is located.

[00:01:58]I'll throw that in here.

[00:02:00]The Solomon Islands is located in an area of Oceania known as Melanesia.

[00:02:08]There are three parts of Oceania, Melanesia, Polynesia, Micronesia.

[00:02:13]Melanesia is like think near Australia.

[00:02:19]Like between Australia and New Zealand, that area up there.

[00:02:23]Uh Papua New Guinea.

[00:02:25]Uh the Torres Strait Islanders are Melanesian. All All of those, Melanesia.

[00:02:31]Named so because the people here have very, very dark skin. They have lots of melanin. Melanesia.

[00:02:40]Choiseul is known here as Lauru.

[00:02:45]Choiseul, I guess, is its colonizer name.

[00:02:49]Which, of course, was pronounced Choiseul when the French named it. It has since turned to Choiseul when the area started speaking English.

[00:02:58]The other islands of this province, like I said, includes Taro. It also include includes I forgot to talk for a second.

[00:03:05]Includes Vaghena down here and Rob Roy Island there.

[00:03:11]The whole island is very thickly forested. There really aren't very many roads or settlements. You could see all the little towns, but they are very small.

[00:03:22]It's all thickly forested. Mount Mak Tomba is in the center right here rising up high.

[00:03:32]And yeah, that's pretty much the geography. We're right across the way from Bougainville, which is still part of Papua New Guinea.

[00:03:39]They're working toward independence right now. Very exciting.

[00:03:45]Yeah, we're kind of in the upper corner of the Solomon Islands here.

[00:03:51]So, of course, people have been living here for a long, long time, the Solomon Islanders.

[00:03:58]Who of course called this island Laur like I said.

[00:04:03]The Spanish sailed by in 1526. They named it San Marcos.

[00:04:08]But no one really calls it that anymore.

[00:04:11]But when Monsieur Bougainville was sailing by naming Bougainville Bougainville Island, Bougainville he named the island Choiseul in 1768.

[00:04:25]And that name kind of stuck.

[00:04:28]Now, it seems during this time there were a lot more islanders living here.

[00:04:33]Solomon Islanders than today.

[00:04:36]A lot of reasons that the population here declined.

[00:04:41]One of which was head hunters from nearby island hopping over and attacking.

[00:04:49]big back Apparently a big problem for quite a while until the British took over and they finally calmed down with head hunting evidently.

[00:05:01]Various traders and whalers would stop by the island here.

[00:05:07]Um not just bringing goods from Europe and North America, but also diseases which killed many islanders.

[00:05:15]And there was also the practice of blackbirding.

[00:05:19]Which for the most part would be Europeans and Americans, white people coming by and being like, "Hey, we've got a great opportunity for you on X Island." Usually Fiji, French Polynesia, somewhere out there.

[00:05:35]"We got lots of farming. You're going to get paid so well. You're going to come home rich. What do you say? We want to hire you." And these people would hop on the boat and they would never return.

[00:05:46]And they would be treated essentially as slaves over on the islands. Like I said, usually Fiji, but lots of the other islands around there as well.

[00:05:57]It's known as blackbirding.

[00:06:00]Also, sometimes people just came and snatched people and took them saying, "You're hired. Get on the boat now." against your will.

[00:06:09]So, yes, the population dwindled after outsiders became more invested in the Solomon Islands area.

[00:06:20]In 1884, the island fell under the control of German New Guinea.

[00:06:27]But, it wouldn't be there for long. In 1899, it would be ceded to the British and become part of the British Solomon Islands.

[00:06:36]Which is probably when the names changed switched My goodness, I cannot talk.

[00:06:40]Switched from Choiseul to Choiseul.

[00:06:44]Cuz colonizing British people could not pronounce anything, especially French words. That's why the island of Well, that was Spanish, but Granada in the Caribbean is now called Grenada cuz the British took it over. They called it Grenada.

[00:06:58]Lots of examples around the world, and I think that's one of them. It's now called Choiseul.

[00:07:05]Which I kind of like it pronounced that way. It's quite charming.

[00:07:10]In 1942, the Japanese invaded Choiseul, occupying it until I think toward the end of the war when the allies booted them out.

[00:07:22]And this island has just remained peacefully here part of the Solomon Islands ever since. The only other news I read was a tsunami that occurred in 2007 hitting the coast here.

[00:07:36]It was quite devastating.

[00:07:39]But, the island has since rebuilt from that time. So, it's in the past now, thankfully.

[00:07:45]And that is the history and geography of Choiseul in the Solomon Islands.

[00:07:51]Like I said, I wish I could show you more pictures. Just imagine beautiful tropical beaches, beautiful tropical jungles, um delicious fish, sand, trees, all of all of the the wonders of the Pacific Ocean, right?

[00:08:08]Of island life here. Just imagine that, and that's what Choiseul is like.

[00:08:15]But anyway, thank you so much for watching. We'll have Google Earth tomorrow. We're going to see more of the Pacific, actually. We're going to see another Pacific coast, but over there.

[00:08:27]What's a good hint I can give you?

[00:08:30]We are going to see the hometown of the first president of Central America. And if you're like, um Miss Geo, Central America's not a country.

[00:08:44]Well, then I guess you'll have to watch to find out what exactly I'm talking about. Can you guess what country we're going to? Let me know if you know in the comments down below.

[00:08:54]Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this type of content, please consider subscribing. Don't forget to hit that thumbs up. And if you can, please hype this video. Hyping videos really, really helps out with pushing these videos out to more people. So, I'd greatly appreciate if you took the time to do that if you have hype points to give out. I'd appreciate that.

[00:09:21]I hope that you found this video to be relaxing and educational. And I hope that you have a good, good, good, good, good night.

[00:09:29]Good night.

[00:09:32]Good night.

[00:09:35]Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Goodnight.