Choiseul Island – Lauru, renamed by Bougainville in 1768
Known to its own people as Lauru, the island was named Choiseul in 1768 by the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, after the French foreign minister of the day. The first recorded European sighting came earlier, in April 1568, when a small boat of Álvaro de Mendaña's Spanish expedition charted it as San Marcos. In the nineteenth century islanders suffered from blackbirding, the often brutal recruitment of labourers for plantations in Queensland and Fiji. A German protectorate was declared in April 1885, and in 1900 the island passed to the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. At 2,971 square kilometres it is the largest island of Choiseul Province. Share your stories with the community.