Binoka

Binoka (died 10 November 1891) was the fourth ruler of the State of Abemama, a precolonial polity in the Gilbert Islands. Binoka was an autocrat who derived his wealth by monopolizing the trade in copra, the only significant export of his domain. He generally maintained the closed borders and prohibition on foreigners that his father, the warrior-king Baiteke, implemented to restrict growing European influence. Early on, he tried to take over Maiana and Nonouti, but he was deterred by local resistance and Captain Edward H. M. Davis of the HMS Royalist, a British warship.

In 1889, Binoka hosted the party of Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island (1883), on Abemama. Stevenson wrote colourfully of Tembinok' (Binoka) in his Pacific travelogue In The South Seas (1896). Tembinok' was depicted as "the last tyrant" of the Gilberts, a sympathetic despot from a bygone era, hoarding Western trinkets he acquired from traders. Binoka was one of the last independent Gilbertese rulers before colonisation. In 1892, Captain Davis arrived on Abemama to find that Binoka had died of syphilis the year before, and the uea's 10-year-old adopted son, Bauro (Paul), was in power. Davis promptly declared the Gilbert Islands a British protectorate, repeating the proclamation on the other islands.