Top 10 Largest Cities or Towns of Kiribati

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1) Tarawa
2) Betio
3) Teaoraereke
4) Butaritari
5) Bairiki
6) Temaiku
7) Bonriki
8) Eita
9) Bikenibeu
10) Tabwakea

Kiribati, officially the Independent and Sovereign Republic of Kiribati, is an island nation in the central tropical Pacific Ocean. The permanent population is just over 100,000 (2011) on 800 square kilometres (310 sq mi). The nation is composed of 32 atolls and one raised coral island, Banaba, dispersed over 3.5 million square kilometres, (1,351,000 square miles) straddling the equator, and bordering the International Date Line at its easternmost point.

The name Kiribati is the local pronunciation of Gilberts, which derives from the main island chain, named the Gilbert Islands after the British explorer Thomas Gilbert, who sailed through the islands in 1788. The capital, South Tarawa, consists of a number of islets connected through a series of causeways, located in the Tarawa archipelago. Kiribati became independent from the United Kingdom in 1979. It is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the IMF and the World Bank, and became a full member of the United Nations in 1999.

Kiribati was named in French by captains Krusenstern and Louis Isidore Duperrey "îles Gilbert", Gilbert Islands, after the British Captain Thomas Gilbert, who sighted the islands in 1788. The current name, Kiribati, is an adaptation of "Gilberts", from the former European name the "Gilbert Islands". Although the indigenous name for the Gilbert Islands proper is Tungaru in Gilbertese language, the new state chose the name Kiribati, the Gilbertese rendition of Gilberts, as an equivalent of the former colony to acknowledge the inclusion of islands never considered part of the Gilberts chain.

The area now called Kiribati has been inhabited by Micronesians speaking the same Oceanic language since sometime between 3000 BC and AD 1300. The area was not isolated; invaders from Tonga and Samoa, and from Fiji, later introduced Polynesian and Melanesian cultural aspects, respectively. Intermarriage tended to blur cultural differences and resulted in a significant degree of cultural homogenisation.

Contact with Europeans began in the 16th century when Magellan, Saavedra and Quirós discovered and conquered the islands of Pope Clement VIII in 1520, the islands of the Queen Catalina in 1528 and the Island (La) Carolina in 1606 (Spanish rule lasted from 1528-1885), at that time the islands of Santa Catalina, were named in honor of queen Catherine of Aragon.[citation needed] Whalers, slave traders and merchant ships arrived in large numbers during the 19th century, and the resulting agitation fomented internal conflicts between tribes and introduced European epidemics.

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 named Thomas Gilbert, who crossed the archipelago in 1788 when sailing from Australia to China.

From the early 19th century, Western whalers, merchant vessels and slave traders visited the islands, introducing diseases and firearms. The first British settlers arrived in 1837. In 1892 the Gilbert Islands consented to become a British protectorate together with the nearby Ellice Islands. They were administered by the Western Pacific High Commission based in Fiji. Together they became the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in 1916. Christmas Island (or Kiritimati) became part of the colony in 1919 and the Phoenix Islands were added in 1937. Sir Arthur Grimble was a cadet administrative officer based at Tarawa (1913--1919) and became Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony in 1926.

Tarawa Atoll and others of the Gilbert group were occupied by Japan during World War II. Tarawa was the site of one of the bloodiest battles in US Marine Corps history. Marines landed in November 1943; the Battle of Tarawa was fought at Kiribati's former capital Betio on Tarawa Atoll.

Some of the islands of Kiribati, especially in the remote Line Islands, were formerly used by the United States and United Kingdom for nuclear weapons testing including hydrogen bombs in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

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